From Undómiel to Tinúviel
by janelover1
Summary: Arwen Undómiel: Tolkien tells us little, and Peter Jackson's portrayal stays flat; yet she must have been great to win the heart of a hero so discerning as Aragorn. Just because Arwen does not wield a sword like Éowyn does not mean she is not heroic - sometimes the battles of the soul are hardest of all. Canonical gap-filler from the perspective of Undómiel herself.
1. Chapter the First

Disclaimer:** Hear ye, hear ye, Jane claims no ownership of anything that already belongs to Tolkien Estates. That being said, these particular words on the page are hers, not yours. **This disclaimer holds for the rest of this tale.

A/N: Recently while rereading my appendices in research, I came across the Lay of Aragorn and Arwen, and once again I felt deeply unsatisfied. As someone who doesn't believe in love at first sight, and especially not the kind of love that makes a person sacrifice her immortality for a (comparatively) scant 6-score years of marriage, I found myself bothered by the story that Tolkien gives us. Arwen remains an enigma at best (at worst, she's just boring), and I started wondering what kind of person she would have to be to inspire such love in Aragorn, and what kind of person she would be to love him back. So here is my attempt to answer such questions, my attempt to find out exactly who Arwen Undómiel is.

Another note: I owe a large part of my understanding of Elves, mortality, and Arwen's perception of the two to Neoinean's amazing short story _Arwen_. Although I didn't have it specifically in mind when writing, Neoinean's story really captures my sense of mortal versus Elven approaches toward living; it also is a most satisfying portrayal of Arwen and Aragorn's marriage.

This story is written in the first-person. Although I am staying as close to canon as I can, by necessity much of this gapfiller is fiction. If I make any mistakes concerning canon, please tell me. Enjoy.

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><p><strong>From Undómiel to Tinúviel<strong>

* * *

><p>I<p>

I STILL REMEMBER the first time we met clear as if it were yesterday—indeed, in proportion to my many years on Arda, barely any time at all has passed since then. But it feels as though it has been many lifetimes since I first beheld him: my life, my love, my Estel.

Ah, Estel... I did not fully understand the Doom and the despair of the Gift of Men until now. Now that you have left me. But I am nothing without you, dearest. And so I will follow you, wherever it is that one goes in death, for I cannot continue in this world without my anchor and my lifeline.

It sounds selfish that I would not—cannot—live for my children, that they are not enough to hold me to this life a little longer. But the truth is that they do not need me and have not needed me for some time now. Everyone wants to be necessary to at least one other, to matter as much as life to someone. I mattered that way to Estel. I do matter to my children—they love me, and I them—but they can live without me, have done so, in fact, for some time now. I sometimes think I hold them back. My presence always reminds them of past duties, past remembrances, past love: they must look to the future. I cannot. I pull them back into stagnation with me, the last vestige of my Elven heritage coming through. But they are not Elves; however the resemblance, they are Men, through and through; and Men look to the future and live in the present. Not the past. Never the past. To live in the past is not truly living at all. Elves do not live so much as exist, I have learned. Men—mortals—live. My children, if they are to be happy, must live as well.

I used to be able to do that. I did it with Estel. He was my grounder; he tied me to the present and taught me to see the future. But without him, I feel my humanity slowly deserting me. I feel myself moving back to the old Elven ways, of this gradual immersion in the past and a kind of detachment from everyday events. So it is time for me to accept the last bit of humanity I have left and take the Gift of Men, the Gift of death. And I will follow my Estel into the unknown.

* * *

><p>I was born in the year 241 of the Third Age, 111 years after the birth of my twin brothers, Elladan and Elrohir; thus they had officially come into adulthood but sixty-one years before my mother bore me. The twins were still young and full of "the energy of youth" (as my mother put it), the perfect brothers to keep up with a curious baby.<p>

They tell me I was curious, yes, always crawling around and finding my way into strange places they would never have thought possible to fit into. It is odd because once I grew up I became a very still creature. I did not like taking risks or going on adventures—oh, I enjoyed the tales when my brothers or others told them, but I never wanted to actually live one of the stories. I was always perfectly content to sit still for hours at an end and embroider, or read, or just sit and think.

My brothers were more active by far, though I do wonder how much of this later can be attributed to what befell my mother. But even before that Elladan and Elrohir were always gallivanting about, mixing with Men and bringing back tales of strange lands and stranger mortals. The more obscure mortal rites were subject of much amusement until my father caught on and attempted to explain things. But death and loss were still alien concepts to us. We were only part-Elven, it is true, but, being blessed with the life of the Eldar and being raised in the Elven settlement of Imladris, death was something that we only heard about in stories. Death happened to far-away mortals in far-away places, not to us. Never to us. We were young, we were Elves, and we were invincible.

At least, that was how it was for me until the year 2509.

* * *

><p>Elves reach maturity at the age of fifty. That is how it was for my brothers and me, too, though we were, even then, not truly Elves. I used to remember my childhood—as I did all my existence—most clearly, although of late it seems fainter than usual. Perhaps it is my human side catching up to me. Or perhaps it is just because I am so very weary. I feel—old.<p>

But my childhood, yes, my childhood... It was golden. My family was still whole: me, my father, my mother, and my two handsome older brothers who always were ready to whisk me away from lessons to a picnic in the woods. Mother was an ever-present source of soothing kindness and love. I recall her as a beautiful Elf of great gentleness and loyalty. Her capacity for forgiveness was remarkable. I remember one day—I was only about twenty-eight, I believe, and still only half my brothers' height—when Elrohir and I had went sliding down the handrails of the banister. When I reached the end, my childish weight allowed me to fly quite a distance before descending to the ground. I sailed right into a vase standing in an alcove and smashed it to bits. It had been one of my mother's favorites.

When Mother appeared, she had looked from me to the vase quite horrified. I braced myself, but instead of even commenting on the destruction, she gathered me up into her arms and murmured soothingly, "Dearest, dearest one, I am so glad you are not hurt, I am so very glad;" and instead of turning us over to my father's discipline, she only said sternly, "Next time you must prepare your landing area before you go sliding. Observe;" and she marched me over to another staircase, moved away the furniture, and then covered the open area with a bounty of pillows. "Now try," and I did, and we went sailing down the handrails and plopping into the pillows, the three of us, until Father and Elladan found us for supper.

So I was a happy child—or at least what passes for one amongst Elves. Among human children I believe I would have stood out as morose and introspective. But Elven ways are different, more discreet and deeper—we rejoice and sorrow, but I have never met a "cheery" Elf. Only mortals hold that distinction.

But I grew up soon enough. Even before I reached full adulthood I had begun to attract many compliments on my beauty. It is not vanity—I know I was beautiful. (I suppose I still am, though I have not truly felt it since my Estel passed.) But the joy of good looks was always tempered by what followed—"She has the look of Lúthien." Ah, Lúthien, Lúthien Tinúviel, my long-ago ancestress who gave up her immortality for a mere mortal. (How much sorrow she caused me!) I knew the lore. Lúthien was beautiful, yes, but she paid the price in full (for that is how I saw it then).

I did not give much credence to the talk—indeed I hardly noted it, suppressing the faint unease so swiftly that it was almost as if it had never been—until I heard my parents murmuring one evening when they thought they were alone.

"Everyone has seen it; even Glorfindel commented on it," my father said worriedly.

"Elrond, my love, it may be nothing," came my mother's soothing tones. "So she looks like her ancestress. I myself look like my grandmother, or so my mother always says. We all more or less resemble our forefathers."

"But it is less a resemblance and more as if it were Lúthien born again," my father persisted. "Celebrían, I cannot—what if...?"

"It will not be so. For all her looks, she is not Lúthien. Our daughter is Undómiel, not Tinúviel. She will be her own person and make her own way."

The conversation ended, my father's fears temporarily assuaged; but it stayed with me, always that little nagging speculation in the back of my mind—what if I _were_ Lúthien, what if, what if...

Ironic that I have only come to fully appreciate myself as myself once I followed the path so eerily similar to hers.


	2. Chapter the Second

II

ANOTHER IRONY: when I first met mortal men, the Dúnedain, I felt assured that I would never follow in my ancestress's footsteps. I met the Men with equanimity, and though they were struck by my beauty, I felt no stirrings in return. Quite the opposite, in fact. So I was safe; I would not become Lúthien. There was absolutely no danger, I felt, of me falling to the same Doom.

* * *

><p>The Dúnedain, so my brothers told me, were our cousins from afar, the Northern descendants of Númenor. And their Chieftain really was related to us (in a backhanded sort of way), as he was descended directly from Elros, my father's brother. The uncle we never knew.<p>

Elros was always a shadowy figure to us. Long ago, long even for Elves, around the turn of the Second Age, he had chosen a mortal existence rather than live on forever with his brother my father, his only family member here on Arda. Instead he had turned away and taken up kingship over Men.

To my brothers, he was a hero of old, a figure of immense strength who nevertheless remained shrouded in mystery. It was Fate, in their opinion, that Elros had become human; it was necessary for the race of Men that Elros became their King. And though my brothers did not pretend to understand the choice, neither did they deny its merit or decry him for having made it.

Prompted by Elladan I announced similar feelings during my history lessons, that I couldn't understand the choice, but that since it had been done for good, I supposed (in a rather dubious voice) that it was acceptable. Yes, it was acceptable that Elros had rejected the life of the Eldar—we had to accept it, since there was naught I could do about a choice made many years before my existence had even been dreamed—the choice of Elros, my... my father's brother.

That was what I called him always, both in speech and in my mind, my father's brother. Not uncle. Never uncle. In the private of my own rooms, I would muse over Elros's rejection of Eldar life and wonder how he could face rejecting his brother. Granted, my father did not have an entire family to be rejected back then—he had not even had my mother—but had not it been Elros's fault, in a way, that it had fallen on my father to create his own family?

I realized that far from seeing him as a hero, I was coming to resent Elros. But even as my resentment grew, I found myself seeking him out more and more—minutely observing paintings, tearing through dusty tomes, even absentmindedly beginning to stitch his outline once before I noticed what I was doing. He fascinated me, and it scared me because I didn't know why. Perhaps that was one of the reasons I resented him so: he was another part of my life over which I could wield no control.

* * *

><p>Over the years I did my best to avoid Men. Dúnedain were always visiting Imladris, partly in recognition of their connection by blood (however thin) to my father, and partly because, as The Last Homely House, ours was a neutral space where different peoples could meet on equal footing. Father would moderate discussions (though they often veered closer toward fights) and then deliberate on whose was the better claim or the better course of action, depending on the affair at hand. He was a great diplomat, my father; he said once that, after going through war after war, he had come to the conclusion that, if given a choice, words were always preferable to weapons. My brothers always laughed when he said that, but I found the idea intriguing, especially in Father's application of it to mortals as well as Elves. Could the mortal Men, who by all accounts were quick to anger and rarely thought before action, really be governed and subdued with words?<p>

So I studied the question, going through the many histories of my father's impressive library. And I began to question Father's judgment as well, though for different reasons than my military-minded brothers did: mortals seemed incredibly impulsive. But he was my father, and I near-idolized him, so I continued to watch his moves. And the first time I managed to best my brothers using words alone, twisting them to my purpose, I began to understand that diplomacy could be useful after all. I began to emulate my father as well as my mother.

But despite my growing interest in my father's doings with the outside world, I stayed away from the doings themselves. Even though I knew it was foolish—if it were truly Fate, there was no escaping it—I couldn't help but hope that maybe, if I just stayed away from mortals, I could stay away from the Doom as well.

(It wasn't until long later that I realized that such a dream—hoping against all evidence, even one's own reason, one's own knowing—was a supremely Human thing to do.)

But as the years flew by, I began to wonder: What were mortals like? And my fear of Lúthien's fate perversely drew me closer to the very thing dreaded most. I think that a part of me felt that, if I really were going to lose to a Man, I might as well know what I was losing to. I didn't realize this then, of course. I simply told myself that my fears about Lúthien were ridiculous—after all, Mother had dismissed them, hadn't she? and her the daughter of far-seeing Galadriel herself!—and that I ought to learn something of the world outside of Imladris. Not to mention that attending one of Father's meetings would allow me to finally witness true diplomacy in action...

And thus I unknowingly turned the art of words against myself.

* * *

><p>When I first met the Dúnadan leader in the first of my father's many councils that I attended (hands clenched to keep them from shaking), then Arveleg I King of Arthedain, I expected in him something familiar.<p>

I know not why; even if Elros had been identical to my father as my brothers were to each other, many generations of Dúnedain traits—mortal traits, I thought derisively—stood between my father's brother and the man who currently led their people.

But whatever I had been expecting, these men were not it. They were tall, yes, and dark-haired, but their eyes were a steely grey that pierced right through one. When I first saw them I shivered, even though I was then old enough to be many centuries past a Dúnadan lifespan. Their eyes... These Men had seen things that I, with all my age and Elven knowledge, could not even begin to fathom. They made me feel—_young_.

It was not a feeling that I enjoyed.

* * *

><p>In the beginning of the year 1409 of the Third Age, a little under two centuries after my first millennium, I encountered the Doom of Men for the first time. And for the first time I could no longer agree with my brothers, even in speech, that Númenor was entirely at fault for its downfall. For what kind of creator would give its children death and then call it a Gift?<p>

At this time there was open war between the Kingdoms of the Dúnedain and Angmar to the North. We Elves in our protected valley of Rivendell were not involved directly in the war, although my brothers would oft ride out with the Dúnedain on smaller missions that required great stealth and speed. They always returned with nary a scratch, so despite Father's muttered worries and my mother's reproving looks, no one really ever bothered stopping them.

One night early spring, I was awoken from my sleep by my companion Mélië, her face white and strained even in the warm glow of the lamp.

"Arwen, Arwen," she whispered frantically, "you must come. Your parents are calling for you; they are in need."

I sprang out of the bed instantly. What could possibly be wrong? Bad things didn't happen here, not in my father's house. In the outside world, yes, but not _here_.

When I finally made it to the great hall several frantic minutes later, all I could see was controlled commotion. Elves bustled everywhere, but what was really unexpected were the people laid out on stretchers and tables—Men.

I found Elrohir. He was standing at the end of the hall looking grim. "There were too many of them," he was saying to father, "too many, and too few of us."

My father nodded and moved to the man on the stretcher nearest the fire. My father is—was—a great Healer, definitely the best West of the Misty Mountains if not in all Arda. But when he straightened from the man's side, he looked drained and worried. "Elrohir, I have done all I can for him," Father murmured, "but he will need much care if he is to survive, and there are many wounded. ... – I must see to others."

And he went off towards Mother, herself busy amongst the wounded. None on this side of the sea probably now remember this, but my mother was just as gifted a healer as my father. Father was very good at burning out the root of the sickness or the injury, but my mother made full recovery possible, coaxing a patient along the path of convalescence with her infinite grace and kindness. In healing, as in life, my parents complemented each other perfectly.

Elrohir had turned to me. "Arwen, I must look to the men... Will you help?"

"Of, of course," I stammered out, although I had never even seen an injury in real life, let alone actually tended anyone. Elven injuries tended to heal themselves, and although I and my brothers were not full Elves, what few scratches and bruises we had gotten as children had always disappeared within the hour. "Elrohir, what exactly—"

But he was already striding away, leaving me and a Doomed man. He was definitely a Dúnadan, with the typical dark hair and long limbs. He probably had grey eyes as well, I thought wryly.

I knelt down beside him and, feeling awkward, took up a wet rag and mopped off the remnants of blood round his left temple. At this he moaned softly; I stopped fearfully. But he didn't move again, so I gathered my courage and began dabbing the rag again. The dried blood was a sickly brown color. I stared at it in horrified fascination. I had never seen blood before, not like this, dried and messy.

Soon enough the blood was gone, and I decided to make him a bit more comfortable, arranging his limbs on the stretcher and getting him a blanket so that he would not get chilled—I knew that mortal constitutions were weaker than ours, so I figured he would need some extra care to keep him comfortable, and his forehead was deathly cold to my touch.

Then Cúwaith and Gonathror came over and lifted the stretcher. "Wait—what? Where are you taking him?"

They gave me odd looks. "Where we always take the wounded."

"Oh, of course!" I blushed. "Ought I come as well?"

"Nay," Cúwaith said decisively. "Your hands may still be needed here, and there are healers waiting in the wing who will tend to him properly."

I opened my mouth, rather insulted at this, but at the same instant I heard my father's voice calling me. "You see, my lady?" Gonathror said. "We'll be off now."

I hurried over to my parents. Both looked wan. "Arwen," my mother murmured, "I know you are as yet untrained in the healing arts, but I find myself needing your strength."

I was about to question what exactly she meant, but one look at my father's worried face caused the words to die on my lips. Instead I said simply, "Of course," and held out my hand to her instinctively.

The world disappeared for a moment. When it returned, I found myself with a strange feeling of weariness, while my mother looked as refreshed as if she had just risen. I felt strange. Did I have power like my parents?

"Thank you, Arwen. If you would like, I think we can now manage—so you can go wash up and rest," Mother said kindly.

I nodded. They turned and went on to the next patient as I hurried from the hall, dazed by my experiences and feeling oddly heavy and muddled in the brain. It took me a few minutes to realize what I was feeling: tired. I was weary, an almost unheard-of ailment for someone like me. It would have been frightening if I didn't want to go to sleep so very badly.

In the morning, Melië came to tell me that the man I had watched over had died despite all our attempts and Elven skill; "he was released from his suffering," she told me. I sat frozen for a long moment. Never more would anyone on this earth see the man whose brow I had cleaned last night. Never, not until the world's ending. It was an incredibly paralyzing thought.

* * *

><p>Some time after that incident I went down to the gardens to embroider in peace and quiet like usual. To my surprise, my solitude was soon interrupted by my father.<p>

When he sat down on the bench beside me and looked as though he would not speak, I decided to pose a question of my own.

"Why did you never tell me I had power?"

He shifted in his seat. "It is not very much, my dear. And since it is not quite manifest yet, I suppose you could just call it strength."

"Strength in what? The kind I gave Mother that night, or...?"

He shook his head. "I cannot say."

"Well, I doubt it will ever be like Glorfindel's," I mused aloud, adjusting the cloth to get a better angle. "But why do you not know?"

Father gave me a lopsided smile. "Powers only specifically manifest themselves after one has lived some time. Most Elves do not have that much power, just a little something that helps them out with their chosen craft."

That gave me pause. "So it could help me with embroidery, if I chose? And if so, how was I able to give Mother strength? That's not related to sewing at all..."

"Everyone can transfer strength in small doses, though you gave a bit more than a small dose last night; that is why you were tired afterward," Father explained. "Anything beyond that depends on what has been given by our Maker."

* * *

><p>Lúthien's power had been amazingly strong, and it had been in song, not embroidery. But despite this assurance I still felt uneasy and sought at every turning to convince myself that I was not and would never be her. "Lúthien had not been a diplomat," I would tell myself, "so there is no reason I should worry about that. Yes, she was good with words, but that was in song, and diplomacy is as much corrupting words as it is using them." Another time I would muse, "Lúthien had many suitors besides Beren; maybe that is why she was always running away into the woods. I do not like woods, only open meadows at their edges, and I do not run or even wander. And Lúthien could fight. I cannot even string a bow."<p>

It was true. Many of Imladris's inhabitants had been training more often, even my father, who surprised me by nearly beating Glorfindel himself in a mock duel. To our North, the Dark stronghold of Angmar was spreading its influence ever southward. Arthedain and Cardolan had strengthened their borders and repelled many attacks, as I had learned from the council meetings, but now the Witch-King apparently had decided to move his troops toward more easterly pickings—Rivendell. There might be real fighting once summer commenced, some said, though I knew not what this meant. Rivendell was so safe, so protected. I could not imagine something so terrible as war occurring right on our borders. My brothers, too, were increasingly spending more time fighting, both in training and with the Dúnedain, and even Melië went out to practice once or twice—she was an excellent archer, it turned out—but the closest I ever got to the training yards was the bench on the side where I could sit and sew while cheering on my brothers.

* * *

><p>Summer came in full, and Angmar did attack, but not for long. There were some border skirmishes, mostly sentries ridding the woods of a few intruders who had managed to sneak in past the usual light defenses, but when the large force tried to invade, father simply spoke the old words and invoked the ancient boundary. The force disintegrated against the Power of Vilya, and the Witch-King turned once again toward the Dúnedain holdings, battles in which our people aided greatly. Danger could not come to Rivendell; Imladris and its inhabitants remained untouched. Despite occasional unrest, I remained content enough, and the years continued to flow by as easily as the stream in our gardens.<p> 


	3. Chapter the Third

A/N: Many thanks to everyone who has reviewed. I was really nervous (and still am somewhat) about this venture, so I can't tell you how much your words mean to me. Also, from now on I (as someone a little too obsessed with canon and grammar) will be using the proper accents in the right spots for everybody's names. Yes, I'm weird like that :)

Also: Aragost's great-grandfather was, of course, Aragorn I. I just couldn't help myself.

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><p>III<p>

AS I APPROACHED my second millennium, I began to grow restless.

It had become the custom of our House to take in the heir of the Dúnedain leadership—Chieftain of the Dúnedain of all three forgotten realms of Arnor (for by this time Arthedain, last of the kingdoms, had fallen)—and teach them some of our ways and our shared history for a time. They would come to stay permanently at the age of eight (though as the lands grew Wilder and Wilder the boys came younger and younger), accompanied by many Dúnedain women, and would leave when my father and theirs agreed it was time, usually between the ages of fifteen and eighteen. Thus I met young Aranarth, Arahael, Aravir, Aragorn I, Araglas, Arahad I, Aragost, and Aravorn, and watched them grow and mature into manhood.

It was a strange experience, especially at first; they grew so very quickly. It seemed that one day there was a small dark-haired boy tugging at my skirts and begging to play hide-and-seek, and the next he was a full-grown warrior praising my beauty to the heavens and acting as though he were Beren himself—until I arched a brow and reminded him of the time(s) I had helped his mother change the bed-sheets after he had wet it from nightmares.

They never made me feel anything beyond the usual companionship of acquaintances; none of my occasional suitors did. All praised my beauty, my grace, how sweet my voice was—almost like Lúthien's, they said (which always made me cold)—but never me. None praised Undómiel but to see her as a shadow of Tinúviel.

But the Men were better than the Elves, I found. Both would come to me in private and beg to let them court me, and I would turn them down as gently as I could. I would have felt bad if they had actually loved me, as Daeron loved Lúthien, but none did. I could feel it—my one most useful power, I thought then, cultivated through the many years of sitting still and listening: the power of sensing others' true emotions—that none actually loved me, only looking. The Men understood this and went away swiftly to seek out their true loves. But the Elves sometimes stayed, composing songs that placed me as something to be revered on high, not an actual being of this world. Surrounded by suitors, I felt more isolated than ever.

* * *

><p>I started watching the Dúnedain women. They would accompany their sons here to Rivendell for the scant years (in my opinion) spent in Imladris, but they still seemed a world apart from me. They were grim and agéd and kept to themselves, often weaving and singing strange songs. But sometimes, like when I was helping them teach Arahael a clapping game, their faces softened, and even in their aging and with the strange lines that came with it, there was a kind of alien beauty to them. It was entirely different from anything I had ever known, a beauty that came from growth and decay and experience. They were very real, a trait that appealed to me all the more after spending a day being called an unreachable star by admiring males.<p>

So one day—only a month or two after Aravir had come to stay—I asked if I could join them in their weaving. They looked at me, faces unreadable, though I could sense a kind of trepidation. Then Aravir's mother nodded (her husband was off doing battle at the time, hence her stay with us) and motioned toward an empty loom.

I had never woven before very much, preferring the smaller, more precise intricacies of embroidery. But the prospect of finally being admitted to their circle was too tempting, so I sat down at the loom and began, my fingers recalling the steps with the ease.

For the first few minutes, the room was filled with a watchful quiet, punctuated only by soft murmurings between the women. At last I inquired to the woman next to me, "If I may be so bold, what are you weaving?"

"A blanket, my lady," she returned a little fiercely; I could sense that she was both ashamed and proud of admitting such a thing.

I smiled softly. "Please: my name is Arwen. ... I have never woven a blanket, only tapestries. Could you show me the differences so I could try as well?"

I could hear the murmurings increase, but I ignored them and focused on the woman next to me. She looked at me closely, those grey eyes digging deep, trying to find my motivation. At last she appeared satisfied. "Well, Arwen, the body is much the same; only the fabric is the main difference."

And gradually I was accepted into the circle. We would weave and sew in the mornings while young Aravir went to be tutored, and in the afternoons I would sometimes accompany his mother down to the training yards to espy the future Chieftain's progress. My brothers were patient teachers and obviously enjoyed the boy's playfulness and energy, although in private they would sometimes confide that human children made little sense to them. I would laugh—the boy did not seem so very different from our own kind's young ones—and tease them that it was because my brothers themselves made no sense whatsoever.

I enjoyed my time spent with these women. In years they were younger than me, yet they had a certain gravitas and maturity—the maturity of experience—that I lacked. We had much to learn from each other, and much in common, and our time together was filled with a warmth that I craved.

When they left, I sorrowed greatly, for I knew that when the next chieftain came to stay, many of my friends would be dead. I would never see many of these women again. But, while it had lasted, our relationship had brightened my days considerably. The mortal women had patience and fortitude beyond belief in ways that even the long-lived Elves lacked; for Elves can wait knowing they have forever, whereas mortals' time is a finite resource, making their patience all the more admirable. And the women, even in their patience, had a certain swiftness to their movements, an absorption in each moment, that time and time again astounded me. Elves have a great capacity for the appreciation of beauty. We—they—have all the time in the world to seek out each small piece of wonder. But the mortal women's delight in our surroundings was both more superficial and more touching. They understood the brevity of each moment, and so they grasped on to them all the more firmly. During our times of weaving and sewing, I learned not only how to make a blanket or mend a torn pant leg (and ai, did Aravir tear his pants!), but also that each moment was special, that there was something to be gained in hurry as well as thoughtfulness.

Ah, the torment and delight of befriending mortals...

For, over the years, I found I could hardly keep myself away from them, introducing myself, giving them my trust and earning theirs in return. When Aravir's son Aragorn came to stay one of the women soon approached me, saying warmly, "I know we have never met, but perhaps you knew my mother Maedeth...", and I grew even closer to this next generation. And so the cycle continued, and perhaps would have gone on all the way until Gilraen came to stay with us, if not for the events of 2509.

* * *

><p>In 2502, the last of the Dúnedain chieftains whom I would know as a child came to stay with us. He was so young, so small. His father Aragost accompanied the group himself.<p>

They had gathered in the courtyard and had just finished formal greetings with my parents. I slipped closer to the group as Aragost hugged his babe tight to his breast in silence. Then he handed young Aravorn to a pretty woman standing nearby.

The woman caught sight of me and stared. Aragost turned to see what she gazed at and then recognized me.

"My lady Arwen," and he sank into a low bow.

I smiled. "You look well, Aragost."

"I am well. – You were right, Lady," he added abruptly. "I did not realize then, but you were right. It was naught but a silly infatuation. You will forgive me?"

I could feel his nervousness—and more importantly, his overwhelming devotion to the woman who stood beside him. It was this latter feeling that settled me. "There is no need to be forgiven," I answered truthfully. "You are not the first of your line to do so and probably not the last."

He stared. "Really? Then, did my father—"

I laughed. "Yes indeed. And his father before him. Not your great-grandfather, though."

His wife, meanwhile, was looking at me intently. It was not jealousy—not quite. At first there was a moment of fear, fear that her husband had simply settled for her after failing to win the beautiful Elf-princess, but after that I sensed a warmth rushing through her at her husband's words. That her husband truly loved her, not I.

And then when, as my parents led the host inside, Aragost stayed back a moment and swept her into his arms, I was embarrassed to witness such an outpouring of private affection between the two. I did not look, but I felt the love anyway, so strong was it; and the sensation left me more lonely than ever. I couldn't help but wonder: would anyone ever care for Undómiel as Undómiel?


	4. Chapter the Fourth

IV

IN 2508, MY MOTHER expressed a desire to see her own mother, Galadriel Lady of the Golden Wood, a most powerful enchantress and herself High-Elven. Although my grandmother had come to visit us only half a century ago, my mother had not stayed in her old home of Lothlórien for several millennia. My father worried, saying that the roads were dangerous, but my mother pointed out with perfect logic that since the roads had been growing more so for many centuries now, it was doubtful the trend would be reversed any time soon. So at last he agreed, and in the spring of 2509 my mother set off with a large company for her homeland.

* * *

><p>The winter of 2508 was a long and bitter one. It began early and ended late, and even in the sheltered valley of Rivendell we were wracked by chill winds and massive snowfalls. Once in a while I was lonely, but I drowned it in our gardens and, as the weather got colder, in our great hall itself, listening to the bard sing tales of old or bantering back and forth with my brothers round the fire.<p>

We maintained a festive atmosphere, at least at first; and then later we tried to make things seem merry at least to lighten young Aravorn's spirits. The snow was deep and icy, perfect for sledding or making snow creatures. My brothers surprised us all with a rather badly-done snow sculpture of our mother, and I found new inspiration in the drifts and sparkling of sun on snow for sewing; first I embroidered and wove our surroundings, and then I began experimenting with the cloth itself, making ever-brighter shades of white and then striving to recreate the look of snow. It was a monumental task, I soon found, for snow, especially in drifts as high as these, seemed to gain a different hue each time I looked at it. If the day was clouded over, the snow gained mysterious tints of blue and gray that shifted each time I moved; if the sun was out, all glittered like gems cut by the Dwarves. I tried to work these qualities into my cloth (mostly for clothing; I did not think that anyone, Elf or Dúnadan, would care to slumber under a blanket of snow).

But as the days grew shorter, aided by the sun's oft disappearance behind thick clouds, we began to feel the effects of winter. We all grew restless, but each in our own ways. My father spent more time on minutiae, searching through even the smallest details that might affect the healing processes. My brothers itched to be out and fight, so instead they began to focus on the weapons themselves; it came to be by the year's turning that I could not find one without a bow or sword nearby and a cloth for cleaning or polishing in hand. I myself ironically began desiring to venture out, though it was mostly (in name at least) to augment my sewing. I would slip out of doors when others were not paying attention to study exactly how the snow drifted against this eave, or sparkled on top of that one; or I would make rudimentary sketches and notes of the contrasts between the sparse, subdued tree colors and the brilliancy of the snow, techniques picked up from Dúnedain women now long dead, though their grand- and great-granddaughters present used them as well.

My mother's restlessness manifested itself in a yearning for travel. During the first month she told us adventures of her youth, but as winter drew on she turned away from past exploits to future ones. She wanted to show us the lands of her childhood, she said; she knew that my brothers would love sleeping in talans, and the tapestries of the Lórien weavers (with a glowing eye on me) were masterpieces crafted in the ways of Aman itself. She spun stories of her home, indeed, that caught us all up, so that when she finished, and we returned to our world of firm halls and blazing fires, so different from the ethereal spaces of tree and talan, disappointment laid heavy on us all.

And so it came that at last she could tell us no more stories without letting her own desire to see such lands once more bleed through. At first we took no note of it; for after such tales, we all wanted to journey south. But as the months dragged on and we approached the year's turning, Mother began to press her point more and more. Listening to her, I sensed something akin to homesickness—and, from my father's growing worry, I gathered that he noticed it, too.

I stopped asking her for stories because I could not bear the look on Father's face. Each time she called Lothlórien 'home' his heart broke just a bit, fragmenting slowly over and over. I know. I felt it.

She did not mean it in the way he took it—I sensed that, too—but this excuse, and my assurances to Father, did not help one bit. – I do not know if anything could.

* * *

><p>At last the weather began to turn, and one day in the early spring of 2509, Father announced that, if she wanted it, Mother ought to travel to Lórien since there was a caravan gathered waiting only for his sign to begin their journey. She leapt up and threw her arms round his neck, and though his mouth smiled, I felt his heart tremble; and but four days later the group was assembled and ready for departure, my mother and several of her closest friends and companions along with many warriors. Whatever else one might say about the scheme, my father's careful planning had been even more detailed than usual. How the food was packed, which horses would be taken, even the clothes themselves, my father oversaw, not willing to relegate one detail that might possibly affect the trip in any way. He wanted—<p>

I myself could not imagine anything possibly going wrong, even with mother's perfect dresses, for it all had been planned so efficiently, so perfectly! And even Elladan and Elrohir, always protective, could find no fault with the party; the number was just right, so they said: small enough to travel swiftly but large enough that orcs and other fell things would not attack.

Ai, if only—

* * *

><p>Apparently we were all wrong. In Redhorn Pass, a group of orcs made bold by hunger and need waylaid our caravan, picking off members one by one until all that remained were my mother and a few of her companions.<p>

The orcs took—took them prisoner... and it was, or at least felt like, a long time indeed before we were able to mount a successful rescue. And the only person left alive by that point was my mother. Not that she was actually alive in any sense of the word beyond merely breathing. ...

I cannot imagine what took place; but whatever it was, it was so, so horrible that it—it _broke_ my mother. It _broke_ her. Her, my mother, who was always really the strongest of us all, even more than my father... For she was so flexible, always able to recover, whereas we retreated into ourselves, turning to stone and ice. And those beasts, those monsters, they _broke _her so badly that even my father with all his love and healing could not even begin to reach her. They broke her so badly that she disappeared, and my family was torn in two.

* * *

><p>My brothers were the ones to rescue her in the end. I scarcely recognized them in the months that followed. Gone were the bright, ever-merry twins who had played with me in the gardens and slid down banisters so long ago. In their place were two full-grown warriors whose very looks turned one quaking and fearful. They channeled all their power into tracking down and slaying the monsters that had taken mother. I could barely stand to be near them, for the intensity of emotion that emanated from them was frightening—mostly because I could not feel any real emotion at all, just an overwhelming coldness—as though their anger had burned itself all the way to a freeze deeper than the snow on Caradhras—that made my teeth chatter and numbed my fingers and toes.<p>

When they returned with her at long last, it was nearly summer, though the mountains were still snowy as always. They did not take her into the infirmary but rather straight into the quarters shared with Father. And then as Father focused all of his Being onto healing her, my brothers went back into the wild.

"But what are your plans?" I managed to ask, wrapping my hands in the folds of my dress to warm them. My brothers still froze me even though the weather was warm nearing hot.

Elladan shook his head, eyes wild, almost fey. "We're just going ... out. Kill some monsters, you know?"

But I didn't. And it was one thing for them to tell about heroes of old who just walked out and slew beasts one-handed, and an entirely different thing for they themselves to walk out in such a state as this. "Does Father know?"

Elrohir gave me a look so intense that my lungs froze for a moment. "He cannot stop us. And nor can you."

"I was not planning on it. Just—please be careful," I almost begged, reaching out to touch them just for a moment, ignoring the cold burning round them.

But they stepped away from my touch. "We must be off, sister," and then they were.

And I was left, alone. And I knew not what to do. I had no healing powers, no gift at fighting... all I could do was sew. _A load of good it had done me!_ I thought bitterly, and my projects began to droop abandoned.

* * *

><p>I sought out Father and tried to bring him food and sustenance. He always emerged from their room looking so absolutely drained that I could not begin to fathom how he remained on his feet, but he continued to refuse drawing power from me despite my countless offers. He denied aid from everyone, even Glorfindel, who had no little power to spare. But I could see that there was no possible way Father could go on like this without some help, so I started looking for a way to transfer power that did not require physical contact.<p>

At last I lighted upon an idea: storing some of my power in the very sewing for which I used it. And with that in mind I quickly began embroidering a little trim along the edges of a napkin and tried to imbue it with my own power at the same time.

It was draining work, especially since I was not sure what I was doing, beyond a sense of losing strength and stamina. It took me twice as long as usual to sew, for, ere long, my head began to spin slightly and my hands shook.

But it was worth it in the end, no matter how exhausted I felt, to see my success: Father, upon taking the tray of food, lifted the napkin to see what foodstuffs today lay underneath, and I could see the wrinkles of care disappear from his face. His posture straightened, and his hands ceased their trembling; and he stared at me for a long moment, and then asked incredulously, "Arwen, what is this?"

I knew he did not speak of the food. "I added some of my Power to my work. –You see the embroidery on the napkin?"

He stared.

"I wanted to help, however useless I may be."

Father set the tray down with an audible clack and then swept me up in a tight embrace. I do not think he had hugged me like that since I was but a child over two millennia ago. "Arwen; oh, Arwen, you are not useless..."

Then he stepped away and looked at me closely. "Thank you so much. But now _you_ must rest to replenish your strength."

I nodded. "But I will come again, Father. You always told me to ask for help if I needed it, and so now I tell you the same."

Father stared at me. I met his gaze squarely, sensing the fear and despair that threatened to overwhelm him. "Father, we're here for you. – Remember that."

He nodded slowly. Then he took up the tray and disappeared into their rooms, leaving me in the hall, alone once again.


	5. Chapter the Fifth

A/N: I previously made an error with canon (since corrected). As Thanwen so kindly pointed out, Aravorn was born in 2497, meaning that he would be about 12 (and thus living in Imladris along with Dúnedain women) in 2509.

* * *

><p>V<p>

SUMMER CAME ON in full, although I doubt any of my family members noticed except, in my brothers' case, to see the changed environment for orc-hunting.

Aravorn was nearing puberty, which meant that, once again, another Dúnadan lad would start seeing me as some goddess of beauty rather than the playmate Arwen he had known; in anticipation of such an event I no longer even attempted to spend very much time with him. But even if this had not been the case I do not know whether I could have stomached acting merrily with the boy while Father fought to save Mother just up the stairs.

I could tell, from his worn looks and weary step, that his continued efforts remained unsuccessful. My brothers I rarely saw, and when I did, I kept my distance; it was selfish, I know, but after being repulsed once, I could not gather the courage to enter the dead freeze that still surrounded them. Instead I kept to myself, trying new ways to make the strength I poured into my work last longer and hardier.

One day I was angrily jabbing at the cloth, trying to figure out a way to make the power stay where I wanted, when someone laid a gentle hand on my shoulder. I jumped, shaken out of my concentration, and it took me a moment to recognize who it was: Borineth, Aragost's wife.

"My lady Arwen," she began cautiously, "I know there is naught I can do, but... at least let me keep you company, instead of you sitting here shut up all on your lonesome."

I stared.

"You look like Lord Elrond when you do that, and I cannot tell what you are thinking," she chided gently. Still, I would have turned her away if I didn't sense the same helplessness but desire to help that still consumed me.

I shook my head slightly and turned my full attention to her. "I apologize. I just..."

"I know, my lady..." Borineth sat down on the seat nearest my own. "I know."

_Do you really?_ I almost snapped. Then I realized: she was mortal, and a Dúnadan, at that; she most likely _did_ know. At that thought I could not help but look at her questioningly.

"I have grown up with death and loss, lady Arwen," she said simply. "It is a part of life."

"But—how do you deal with it?" I could not keep the words from spilling forth so very wonderingly, like a curious child might.

She smiled darkly. "It is a choice. Every day one must choose: do you give in to the loss and let it take you as well—trapping you endlessly in the past—or do you accept it and look towards the future so that you can continue to live and appreciate life?"

"What do you mean, _accept it_?" I asked. "I cannot—should not—just forget!"

"I did not say 'forget'. I said accept—not accept that it was right, or that it should have happened—only that it _did_."

I was starting to understand, foreign as the concept was to me. "So—you can still answer it, and respond, but... I should not hold on to it endlessly." It was more a question than a statement.

"Yes."

"But:" I faltered. "_How?_"

"I did not say it would be easy," she reminded me dryly. "I said it was a constant choice, one that must be made each and every day. ... It is a struggle we must always contend with, lady."

"—Arwen, please. Just Arwen."

She eyed me carefully. I could feel the worry and warmth warring; then she chose. "Alright, then—Arwen." Then she nodded and left.

* * *

><p>And she was right, though I did not understand just how right until later, when I at last had found it in me to make the choice: to look to the future, not just the past. I suppose it was, in part, my first step toward Mortal living.<p>

* * *

><p>Midsummer came and went; high summer was upon us and then passed us by. I did not pay any real attention, but I did not think Father noticed at all. He had healed Mother's wounds, but he could not reach the source. I think it was because this time there was no sickness, not really; it went beyond that. Her very Spirit had been broken, and only the Highest Powers could truly mend that. – If she had been mortal, she would have died long ago; but she was not, and so she lingered on, body healed but mind still convulsing.<p>

I saw Father bring her outside once. She was wearing a thick dress that covered all skin except for her face and the very tips of her fingers despite the heat. They were sitting by the waterfall, formerly her favorite spot—or rather, she was sitting, and he was standing nearby. At a look from her he moved away. As he did so, his shadow crossed hers, and she flinched.

His heart broke, and I fled. Only inside my rooms did I realize that I had not been able to sense my mother at all.

* * *

><p>Messengers had, of course, long since informed my grandparents of what had befallen. One day in late summer a sentry hastening from our southern border informed my father in a breathless tone that 'the Lady and Lord Celeborn' would be arriving by the week's end.<p>

My father's face changed from wonder to recognition and then back to inscrutable. But the feeling I sensed from him was different than any of his I had felt before: understanding mixed with resignation, as though he had been waiting for this. As though he had been expecting this.

That night I went to the waterfall. The moon was out in full, and amidst the soft shadows of my surroundings, the falling water looked like liquid moonlight. But someone had already preempted my seat: Father.

I slipped back into tree cover, but I was not my brothers, and my departure was not so silent as I could have wished. Father turned toward me, his cheeks wet, and called out sharply, "Who goes there?"

I stepped back out. "Father..."

"Arwen! – What are you doing out here?"

"I ... did not want to slumber." I approached him cautiously.

"Really. – Is that the only reason?"

"You have been expecting my grandparents." I wondered at the wisdom of speaking so openly, but I did not take the words back.

He started. "Why would you think that?"

"Have you?" I countered.

There was that inscrutable stare again. _Was this the look Borineth spoke of?_ I wondered. At last he said, "Yes. I have."

"Why?" It was not so much spoken as breathed.

"I—I cannot—" He shuddered and tried again. "I cannot care for her as she needs. ... None of us can."

I froze as his despair rushing over me mingled with my own. "What—what are you saying?" But I did not want to know what he was saying, for I knew it already, but _it could not be true_...

"When the weather turns, they will go to the Havens," he murmured. I could barely make out his softly strangled tones through the crashing of water directly behind him. "They will go, and she will sail."

He had said it. He had said it, and yet for some reason I could not comprehend the syllables. "_She_ will sail to Valinor," I repeated, bewildered. "Why...?"

"Why not all of us?" he finished.

I nodded, throat constricted.

"You and your brothers: I suppose it is your choice, whether to stay or to go. But I— My duties... my work here on Arda is not done. – I cannot abandon them all," he said almost wildly. I could feel the conflict within him. He wanted to go, to be with his wife, but, but—

"I know," I said; and it came out like a blessing. And like one who blesses, I reached out to him and kissed his forehead, something I had not done since long ago.

Then I straightened, and Father looked up at me wonderingly. The conflict had subsided—not gone, for it would always be manifest in him, as it would be in all of us—but he would recover. He would move on. _He will be able to look to the future_, I thought suddenly.

"Arwen..."

"Yes?"

He was shaking his head at me in that oh-so-familiar paternal gesture. "Arwen, you are a wonder indeed." And then, for the first time since before Mother had left, he smiled. Shaky, and sorrowing, but a smile nonetheless.


	6. Chapter the Sixth

A/N: Please tell me if Arwen acts too maudlin or seems to be overreacting/not reacting enough in any way—not necessarily because I'll rewrite everything if you yell at me, but because I want to see if I've achieved the right tone and effect I was striving for.

* * *

><p>VI<p>

MY GRANDPARENTS ARRIVED, and none could any longer pretend that there was hope for my mother. Instead an air of resignation descended upon Imladris. My brothers were the only ones to seem unaffected, but I knew better. When Father had told us the final plans set in place for Mother, the temperature around me had dropped so low my fingers turned blue.

They burned so fiercely that I began to worry constantly.

He had put the choice before us just after Grandmother and Grandfather arrived. Gathered in Father's study, him behind the desk with his fingers steepled together as usual and us three sitting tensely in front, we made an odd picture. My brothers' masks were firmly in place, and Father looked more sorrowing than ever. I myself, usually so good with sitting still, somehow could not find rest. Instead, in desperation, I had grabbed an old sock and started darning it. When I entered, raggedy garment in hand, Elladan gave me such a frosty look that I sat in the chair on the exact opposite side of the room from him.

Father raised a brow, about to comment. But at that moment Mother's parents entered, and all was forgotten in the wake of their Power. They both crossed the room to stand behind Father.

"When you were born," Grandfather began at last, "a Choice was set before you: to cross the sea to Aman with your Father when he sails, or to stay on these shores without him and become Mortal. – Celebrían's departure—" He swallowed heavily before continuing. "Her departure changes things. You may make the Choice now and accompany her to Aman before Elrond sails."

"Or you may stay and delay the Choice," Grandmother added. "You do not have to decide so soon! None—none could have forseen this..." She looked strong as ever, but I noticed round the corner of the desk that she reached for Grandfather's hand and clasped it tightly.

Father sighed. "Elladan? Elrohir?" He paused, searching us out, peering deep into our eyes as if he could see straight into our souls. "Arwen?"

My brothers glanced at each other swiftly without turning their heads. Then Elladan said darkly, eyes burning, "We shall stay," and Elrohir nodded, the same fey look smoldering in his gaze.

Grandmother and Grandfather turned to me. "What say you, Arwen?"

I looked at Father, at the way he stared down at his desk and how his fingers were knotted together just a little too tightly for comfort. And I could not find it in myself to abandon him. Aman would heal Mother, no doubt about that, but Father's wounds were of this world, and he had to stay.

"I will stay."

* * *

><p>The caravan departed soon after, my grandparents at the front and Mother's ladies-in-waiting arranged round her. Father was pale all day, and as he raised his hand in farewell one last time, wedding band glinting in the sunlight, I saw his hand tremble.<p>

* * *

><p>No-one cried outright when she left, although more than a few eyes were wet. My brothers did not cry, masks firmly in place. They clearly longed to be out killing things as soon as possible.<p>

I did not cry either. It felt as though everything were happening in a dream, as though I was not quite present all the way. As I stood next to her covered litter and murmured that I would miss her, I suddenly felt like an imposter in a badly-done play. We were just going through the motions. She had already left, and I had already said goodbye.

The real task was how to carry on with our lives. How to move on.

* * *

><p>One would think that a single person's absence would not be so crushing in a place like Imladris, which was always full of visitors and people. But Mother had been such an integral part of it that we found ourselves struggling. We had to dole out her many duties—and in many cases simply do without. Father had no partner now to aid in Healing, nor was there any lord or lady who could bring cheer and goodwill to a meeting of hostile delegations like Mother had.<p>

Mother had made Imladris a home.

The struggle to go on without her was difficult for all of us. Father was still withdrawn, although my constant ministrations were beginning to have an effect. It became a habit of ours to always eat the evening meal together wherever he happened to be working. I would bring the food for him to lay out—thus forcing him to accept nourishment both from food and my Power—and then the silence would stretch out until he could no longer stand it. Then he would begin to talk, softly at first, scarcely, and gradually getting stronger as he went on. He would tell me about whatever project he had worked on that day and then transition from there to past remembrances—past efforts working on such ailments or injuries, or how he had first learned this treatment, or developed that one. He had always been—he had been accessible, it was true, but only to a point. The line had always been clear between father and daughter. But now, as he opened up to me, I began to learn more about him as a person. It was not uncommon: Elves being much more long-lived than mortals, it is natural for children to become equals with their parents, even friends. And so became Father and I.

Winter came, snow piled up, and my brothers were forced to stay in Rivendell. They chafed at the bit and snapped at any who came near.

Father worked long hours in the infirmary when he was not brokering treaties or ending disputes. I accompanied him often, more for the support of companionship than anything else. At first I felt odd attending in the infirmary or whatnot—just sitting in a corner sewing and not helping Heal or anything useful—but once Erestor had pulled me aside and thanked me for keeping Father company, I took to my task wholeheartedly. And soon it became natural enough to sit in the infirmary, sewing some, talking with the patients, sometimes helping out with the easier tasks—one time it was simply watching over someone to ensure there were no sudden changes in his condition while Father tended to the others.

Spending more time in councils and in the infirmary served to waken my eyes to the world outside of Rivendell even more. I began to attend to the affairs of Men, to learn the ebb and flow of diplomatic relations. And I began to learn, from watching the powerful, something of what it meant to rule.

* * *

><p>Aravorn matured and left to be raised by his people once again. With him went my last friend, Borineth. I had clung to her in the past months—or rather, she had somehow always known to be present when I most needed her, when my self-control felt least secure. Then she would sit near me, sometimes offering a gentle hand, giving me strength without forcing me into anything.<p>

At first, I remember, I had thought it odd—well-nigh impossible—to ever see Men as equals, for they were so much younger...! But now I realized that age mattered little without maturity. I looked up to Borineth and wanted to be like her, and there was nothing strange about that. Not anymore.

* * *

><p>And I: I felt ... adrift, detached, as though I were simply floating from one duty and one persona to the next. In council meetings I was sharp and careful, too much like Father in many respects, but still less quick to judge and react. In the infirmary my corners melted away, and I was kind and warm to all who passed through, a faded echo of Mother's goodness. And when I concentrated on my projects, I myself melted away, and nothing in the world existed but the work.<p>

I was losing myself. In my efforts to contain my grief and become Father's aide, I no longer quite knew who I was or what I wanted. – Perhaps I had never known, being content to slide along easily from one group to the next—from my brothers to (very briefly) the many admiring my beauty to, at last, the Dúnedain women. But now I had nothing to belong to. Or mayhaps I had never had anything, not really, but the easy life that I had enjoyed had lulled me into complacency, into being content to drift along.

Whatever it was, Mother's absence and my subsequent efforts to, in some ways, replace her, had thrown my own failings into sharp relief. However much I might try, I was not Mother and never would be. The problem was that I did not know what else to be, had, in fact, never considered this question. But now I could no longer ignore it: that my being did not really seem to have a purpose, and that my customary easy ways had little substance compared to all those around me.


	7. Chapter the Seventh

A/N: if you don't feel even a little sorry for the twins by the end of this chapter, then I probably haven't been doing something right, so (as usual) I'd like to know what you think. And thanks to Sadie Sil for letting me use the nicknames for Elrohir and Elladan that I first read in her stories.

* * *

><p>VII<p>

SEASONS PASSED, and I would like to be able to say that as time went on I gradually settled into my new roles. But the truth is that, although I did enjoy the work, I was not settled. I spent my days laboring longly: taking notes for Father's meetings; copying or setting down healing techniques; assisting in the infirmary with patients, storage, or as Father's assistant; and sewing, always sewing. It was rewarding, yes, but never felt quite _right_, as though this were but a stopping-place instead of the final destination.

What tied me down, the only things where I could even begin to find a place for myself, were the various processes surrounding sewing. As the seasons passed by I became wholly consumed with every aspect of cloth, from the initial spinning of thread to embroidering embellishments on the final pieces. Like my brothers—like Father—I threw myself into the work with a zeal that could only come from desperation. And like the rest of my family, in doing so I became more detached, more isolated, than ever before. I no longer felt that deep connection which had kept me content in Imladris all my life.

It did not help that I had no real friends. The few childhood companions I had had did not involve themselves in sewing or weaving, let alone dyeing, and the friends of my adulthood, being mortal, were either dead or dying off in some faraway Dúnedan village. I did not even have the circle of admirers to keep me company, though I did not actually want them; Mother's tragedy had given me an excuse to send them away, and I only missed them when I felt utterly lonely and sorry for myself. And I never really had the time to make friends, in my slow way, with the weavers and dyers, all of whom kept to their original circles. I might have become friends with them slowly, later, but as things turned out I was never to have such an opportunity.

* * *

><p>Nevertheless—in spite of the struggle of not belonging with any one group, whether dyers or weavers or even the Council Aides with whom I often sat—I thought I was comfortable enough. The more laid-back rituals of cloth offered a pleasant contrast to the sharp immediacy of Father's world of Councils and Healing. In the mornings I would shadow Father; in the afternoons I would focus on my own projects of dyeing or weaving. The lighter occupations of sewing and embroidery I saved for counsel meetings and Infirmary work. It brought a schedule to my days, forcing me out of languor and into action. Action was nice. Action took my mind off the past and forced me to look at, if not the future, at least the present.<p>

Partly because I was pushing myself far beyond my usual activity, I began to experience mortal constraints—slight aches and pains, a more gnawing hunger, and, most disturbing, weariness. I woke up feeling energetic enough, but by the end of the day I was tired. I slept deeply nearly every night.

The benefit was that I was forced to learn to better control my Power. I had not the energy to hapharzardly dump power into my works whenever and wherever I felt at a moment's notice. No. I had to hone it and shape it into the form most efficient and most lasting, to spin it out long but strong as spinners do when making thread. My experimentation now went slow and painstaking, as I had to plan out each step in exacting detail, figuring how much power could be spared and where, before implementing any plans.

And the work paid off: I had thought I was good at sewing before, but now—! It was exhilarating. I wondered if this was what my brothers felt when they had just found the Orc den they had been tracking for the last few seasons. And I wondered if, consumed by a similar urge for intensity, they too ever felt so alone.

* * *

><p>We did not get along as well as we had used to, although some of this was only to be expected given our disparate ages and work. They were fiercely honed warriors who often spent weeks, and sometimes months, out fighting; I stayed at home and sewed. It was, really, only natural that sometimes our conversations did not quite ... line up.<p>

"How have you been, sister?" Elrohir would say politely while Elladan looked away with a blank expression.

"Well enough. – I have been experimenting with different kinds of embroidery patterns—to see whether different shapes can hold one's Power longer..."

"Arwen, you've sewn every shape possible by now," this from Elladan in an indulgent tone as though I was a child to be mollified by candy.

"I mean the structure of the thread itself, and the different structures created by different patterns through the cloth," I would try to explain. I didn't do it very well.

"How can they be different structures? It's just cloth and more cloth, isn't it?"

It probably was honest curiosity speaking. Very possibly they honestly did not understand the differences. After all, I myself had only come to comprehend such matters after years of studying.

But then I would sense the wave of boredom from them, catch Elrohir's eyes shift toward the window, towards the outdoors, impatiently; and gradually I stopped trying.

They would tell me about the latest hunt without answering my labored questions on basic tracking technique, and I would listen halfway and use the rest of my attention to plan out my next experiment or to draft an amendment to a council's resolution. I would reluctantly show them an old project, and they would hum with vague interest before setting off to hunt some more as soon as they could escape.

And each time they came back, they looked more tired and more hunted. Elladan came back sporting a slight cut to his cheek. Elrohir sprained his wrist. Elladan's horse got four bloody gashes along its side.

My brothers were dangerous—but so were the orcs.

* * *

><p>They and Father began to fight.<p>

Elladan and Elrohir would take turns shrugging off injuries. "Somehow those filthy bastards heard us coming, that's all." "The wind changed at the last minute and brought our scent. You know they have excellent smell, more's the pity."

Father growled at them in frustration and fear, and they returned the gesture, spitting back, "_We _have been doing our part to keep the North safe" and, even more cutting, "You have no such authority over our every move. You are our father, yes, and our liege lord, but we are _adults_. If we want to get ourselves hurt, we can. And at least _we_ are useful."

They were growing reckless, but nothing serious had yet occurred to deter them. So instead of moderation, my brothers continued to hurl themselves at Orcs with breathtaking mindlessness.

* * *

><p>I gathered my courage and approached them one evening cautiously. It was late in the year and cold, almost winter, though no snow as of yet. They were in the bow-shed tending to their weapons.<p>

"'Ro? 'Dan?" They looked up at me, half-curious and half-suspicious. It had been some time since I had used the old nicknames, and even then I had used them rarely. "May I join you?"

Elladan recovered first. "Of course." He cleared a space for me courteously.

"So what brings you out here? It is a cold walk between this shed and your rooms," Elrohir said in a manner too forced to really be teasing. They were both tense, as though I were some unknown danger not yet assessed.

"I have not seen you in a while." It was not really an answer. I knew it, and they knew it, too; after all, they were Father's children as well. "Will you be staying the winter?"

"Why do you ask?" Elladan's face was unreadable, but I could sense trepidation. They were unsure of me and of my motivations.

"I was just wondering. ..." I looked down at my hands, empty for once, in order to sidestep the question. "It gets lonely sometimes."

"Lonely? and you surrounded by people and visitors?"

I grimaced. "They either do not understand, or they understand all too well and always let me alone. – At least you have each other."

Elrohir's mouth relaxed for a moment, and his eyes danced mischievously. "Poor Arwen. Have they been neglecting you?"

Elladan laughed tightly without any real humor. "Ah, dear heart, you must not worry. We will keep you safe."

I stiffened. "_They_ have not been neglecting me. If anything, it is my fault. I, too, have thrown myself into some work at the expense of companionship."

They both looked at me sharply at that. After a moment Elladan drawled, "_Too_?"

"You both have done the same thing I have, and Father, as well. We all have spent nearly all of our time honing our crafts, whether it is you and fighting or Father and his healing."

Elrohir raised a brow. "And what is your craft? Sewing?"

"Yes."

They looked at each other as if exchanging silent messages of mutual disbelief.

"You rank embroidery with Orc-hunting?" Elladan said at last.

"Not just embroidery," I tried to explain once again. I could feel the conversation starting to slip back into the old patterns. "I have been studying the whole process—making thread and dyeing as well as weaving, and, yes, embroidery."

Elrohir was studiously examining his bow.

At last Elladan said kindly, "I am glad you are employed, sister. But our work is _important_."

I stood in a rush. "And what would you do, without mine?"

"We are just trying to say that you probably would not be able to spend time ...coloring, or whatever else you do, if not for warriors like us," Elrohir answered honestly.

"And you would go fighting orcs nude if not for my work," I shot back.

"Those monsters are growing in strength all the time," Elladan said, his voice taut with suppressed emotion. "We cannot stop fighting."

"Not even to spend a day with me?"

Elladan looked as though he could have strangled something. "Oh, so it would be better to spend a day watching you play with needles all cooped up rather than being out there, free to move and fight and, and _do_ something!"

"Aye, because it is so much better to come home all bruised and battered!" I spat back.

My brothers stood as one, eyes glittering. "Is this why you came out here, then?" Elladan asked, his voice all the more dangerous for its sudden softness. "To criticize and condemn like all the others?"

Elrohir shook his head and glared at me. "Just because Father disagrees does not mean you have to follow him blindly, Arwen. Think! Where is the sister I went sliding down the banisters with? the one who was always on our side? Look past your sheltered world for once and try to understand what we are doing!"

I stared. "Oh! so it is a crime for me to at least sometimes want to feel as if I have real brothers and not some phantoms always leaving? If you think I blindly follow Father's every thought just because, unlike you, I actually spend time with him, then you are fools indeed. Where is your sister? Here! unlike _you_."

Elladan suddenly turned away and took several steps back toward his bench, shaking his head slightly. "Leave it, 'Ro. It is no use trying; she cannot understand."

Elrohir ignored him. "Arwen. Listen to me. I know it is hard for you in there sometimes. It was hard for us; why do you think we leave so often? It's true: they do not understand. And we _have_ to fight!"

"But why? When will it be over? When will you rest?" I asked, voice quavering.

A pause—Elrohir bowed his head, and Elladan shifted slightly; and it seemed the temperature plummeted as we three stood frozen—and then came the low, hoarse whisper: "When we have made things right."

* * *

><p>And I shall leave this world still not knowing which of my brothers spoke those anguished words.<p>

* * *

><p>But all I could see then, the only thought I could hold onto in the heated aftermath of that bitter exchange, was that my brothers were fools indeed. There had to be some way to save them from themselves, I felt. If my brothers could not see the doom they were heading towards, I could. And Father's increased reliance on me had taught me at least one thing—that I was, in fact, not useless at all. What could I do?—I could sew, and sew well.<p>

So I did. And if my work could prove my brothers wrong as well, then that made it all the more desirable.

I would show them. I would show everyone.


	8. Chapter the Eighth

A/N: Well, I'm back, as Sam said to Rosie. It's been a while, but hopefully this chapter won't disappoint.

* * *

><p>VIII<p>

IT WAS A MASSIVE project. The basic scheme was simple: make two tunics, one for each twin, and imbue each and every aspect of the clothes with all the protective Power I could. The challenge lay in actually carrying out such a scheme; but I thought I could handle it. After all, I had enough Power, and more than enough control. Granted, I did not have quite so much experience with the actual cloth-making, but, again, I had control over my Power, so there was really nothing to worry about. The tunics would be my masterpieces, my capstones, the greatest clothes ever made... For a moment, I allowed myself to imagine the scene-everyone startled, amazed, at the skill and verve of this mysterious artist, who would turn out to be (shock and awe!) Elrond's daughter, Undómiel the seamstress, Arwen the useful and needed...

Every Power has its limits, but I knew mine. Therein lay greatness, or so Glorfindel once said, and Glorfindel knew greatness. I would be great.

(I was not Glorfindel.)

* * *

><p>I started with the make-up of the cloth itself, using my afternoons to plunder the storerooms for the most pristine skeins of undyed silk and cotton. I wanted to lock in the first layer of Power with the color, which meant I needed to dye the threads myself. Dyeing is always a long and strenuous process, but this particular project was doubly difficult due to the added component of Power.<p>

In order to have the solitude I needed for such workings, I waited until the last worker had left her post and then slipped inside to dye during the night. I did not know the dyers well enough to comfortably work alongside them during the day, and the last thing I needed was someone noticing my work and asking questions about it. I wanted to be able to present the tunics in all their finished glory, as a feat already accomplished. So absolute secrecy was of course absolutely necessary. For once I was grateful that no one any longer paid enough attention to me to notice the changes in my routine and try to ferret out the truth.

Working through the night meant that I had to entirely rearrange my sleep schedule. Under any other circumstances, I would not have worried about getting enough rest. But the amount of Power that I planned to be using quickly turned out to be immensely taxing. My attention began to slack during council meetings, and I responded with less than my usual alacrity when assisting Father's Healings.

Clearly something had to be done. There was no way Father missed any of my mistakes, and if they were to keep occurring, he might just investigate why. I could not afford to be discovered.

So I began to take long walks, deep into the more forlorn parts of the valley. They were always close enough to Imladris that I was in no way in any sort of danger but far enough that almost no one ever visited. There I would pull out a second cloak (Charmed to withstand dirt and stain, of course) and spread it onto the ground so that I could lean against a tree and relax—well, rest, really. Those were the only times when I truly slept, exhausted from a night of labor and Father's busy mornings, out there in shaded glens where, when the wind blew, I could watch the patches of light dance with the leaves. At first my sleep was fitful and light, but as the weeks went on I got used to sleeping during the day out in the open. It didn't seem to matter either way, though, since I found that I needed less and less sleep than previously assumed.

* * *

><p>Each night I labored long to infuse all the Power I could into the threads. After much deliberation, I had decided to make the tunics equal parts comfortable (silk) and sturdy (cotton). It was not the most typical of blends, I know, but I felt that my skill was equal to the task. It would work. I would make it work.<p>

I split the silk and cotton into several piles. Some were dyed grey, others black, and the rest a rainbow of colors one would not usual expect: various greens and browns, but also shades of white, yellow, blue, and red. And while I stirred I planned to let the Power soak in as well—Power that would let the threads individually shift ever-so-subtly to match their surroundings.

My first attempt fell far short of success. Several piles soaked up dye but not Power, others vice versa, a direct result of my uneven attention to both tasks. It took many failed batches and much excess energy before I figured out to put the Power directly into the dye and then let both be absorbed all at once.

During the trials I was constantly on edge. During council meetings I would write suggestions to myself in the margins of my notes, only to look up and realize that Father was ushering things to a close. Once, while assisting in the infirmary, I got so caught up in imagining all the ways something could go wrong that, to my great embarrassment, I wound up making over two hundred poultices when only twelve had been needed. Thankfully, the nurses all accepted my excuses of distraction without inquiring too deeply as to what exactly said distraction was.

And so, at last, it came time for the making of the cloth.

I wove enough material for two tunics, two Elven-tunics. The Power I put in ensured that the cloth would shrug off water and dirt and stains of any kind. It also soothed the cloth into quiet and stillness, so that they would not be worried by wind or make any noise that might alert someone of the wearers' presences. Ah, they were beautiful indeed. When I was done, the cloth shimmered and shook. I took it outside to test the coloring, wrapping it round me carefully like a giant shimmering blanket. The shadows moved, and the cloth moved with them. Even I could have gone hunting successfully wrapped in these.

Next came the crafting of the tunics. When my brothers went out on their next hunt, I snuck into their rooms and measured their clothing sizes. Then I cut the cloth just so. Beautiful tunics, beautiful. I put Power that would prevent rips or tears and keep the tunics fitted snug as the wearer wanted. I was almost done.

* * *

><p>Even now, it pains me to think how close I was, to remember their beauty and know what wonders they would have been, had I succeeded in my work. Had I been able enough to succeed.<p>

* * *

><p>I realize now that the unraveling began long before the last stage, before the embroidery. The embroidery was … to have been beautiful, had it been completed. Had it been completed, yes, then it would have been the capstone of my work. I planned that the stitches, always careful, would be even closer and more invisible than ever before, and that the patterns made would reflect and anchor in blessings of safety, speed, and protection. If ever finished, I think the tunics really would have been a marvel.<p>

But I was foolish. – No, perhaps not that. (I can hear my husband's voice in my ear, telling me otherwise...) But I was just as blind as my father and my brothers. And it _was_ foolish of me, Estel, to imagine that I would somehow escape the same self-destructive tendency without outside aid. I tried to survive on my own. … Then again, I did not yet have Estel by my side, and who else would I have turned to?

No matter. Perhaps, even then, it was meant to be. But whatever the reason, I was isolated, and had isolated myself, and so no one held me back until it was almost too late. – Some might scoff and say that Elves would never succumb to such a pitfall, but they do not know Elves. And, after all, I was not wholly Elven; mortal blood, however thin and diluted, still ran through me. Perhaps that is why I was so susceptible—but then again, greater than I have fallen. I do not know.

* * *

><p>But I was cognizant of none of this back then. All I knew was that, as I threw myself into the task of the tunics, my world increasingly shrank and narrowed focus. I gradually shook off the constraints of tasks that I had not sought out before Mother's passage—my secretarial position in Councils, assistant Nurse in the Infirmary, even Father's help-meet—tasks that, try as I might, and fulfilling as they were, were not fulfilling enough. … As I said, the only place where I truly felt at home was with cloth, and so increasingly that is where I spent my time, to the point that I would only leave my room to eat and stock up on supplies like the fine silk thread I was to use for the embroidery.<p>

And no one noticed—or at least no one commented or tried to move me, which counted as the same thing, really. So I carried on. The work caught me up, absorbed me, held me in its thrall. I _was_ the work. In trying to find who I really was, I ended up losing myself instead.

Already tired, I began to lose what little rest I had, tossing and turning between nightmares of my brothers getting slain by orcs and strange dreams about seas of linens threatening to overwhelm me. Even though I felt more tired more often, it seemed to be taking me longer to fall asleep—partly because I was coming to fear sleep. I also felt even less hungry and began to skip meals, sometimes whole days at a time. Sometimes my hands began to tremble for no reason at all. And my mind… I kept replaying over and over again the last time I had spoken with my brothers, their anguished words. But I attributed it all to overuse of Power and assured myself that, as soon as the tunics were finished, all would return to normal. I continued to pour myself into the tunics, and, basking in their glory, I didn't notice how insubstantial I was becoming.

Anything beyond the tunics increasingly seemed rather pointless. So I did not spend time on other things unless it was absolutely of paramount importance. I did not need much sleep, so spending much time on it was unnecessary. I did not need much to eat, either. Tending my hair, talking to others, even leaving my room all became superfluous. Nothing mattered but the work.

I had to right things between me and my brothers. Only then did I see that I had, however unintentionally, pushed them away rather than trying to understand, and I thought, well, I thought that the only way to correct it was the tunics. Far from being the revengeful triumph of my original plan, the tunics morphed in my mind into the centerpiece of all my familial hopes and dreams; my entire future hinged on these tunics. I had to finish them; I had to. I had to make them perfect. I had to finish them. I had to make things right. And I could not rest until then.

I could not bear it.


	9. Chapter the Ninth

IX

IT TURNED OUT that, at least for those with mortal blood (however thin), dying was, in fact, surprisingly easy to do. After all, I had nearly managed it without even trying.

* * *

><p>(I think I was not trying.)<p>

* * *

><p>Father found me, collapsed in my seat, cloth half-out of my lap and forgotten needle on the floor where my unconscious hand had dropped it.<p>

(I found out, later, that I was not even breathing.)

I was taken to the infirmary, where Father worked night and day to untangle me. I had poured too much of myself into the work; I had become part of the work; I _was_ the work… Father had to separate me from the work, and it was a careful job; for he had to take apart my work without taking apart me.

* * *

><p>Things were so strange, so fuzzy… Where was I?<p>

The world was dark and strange. As I looked, it began to resolve itself into writhing, indistinct shapes, but all surrounding a single white path. Forward, in the distance, the path ended in great white arches leading into what looked to be – white halls?

I took a step forward, curious.

"Arwen."

The voice came from behind me. I whirled around, but all I could see were indistinct shadows. I took another step forward along the path.

"Arwen!"

I stopped, paused, could not help myself—"Father?"

"Arwen… Come back…"

And then, somehow, he was there behind me. His form was shaky and transparent in places, but—

"It's me, Arwen. It's your Father. Come back."

The white halls were so inviting, like white shores beckoning me home… Home. Father. How could I leave him?

"My daughter—" He held out his hand pleadingly. "_Please…_"

I couldn't help but look back one last time, at those white halls and arches—

But he was my father, and I could not leave him, and really, how could I go West so soon after choosing not to?

* * *

><p>I wondered, once, whether he ever regretted calling me back. For if I had stayed in Mandos's Halls, I would have been reborn in Aman, and been reunited with Mother, and been waiting when he crossed the sea at last. And I would not have ever met Aragorn and my Doom.<p>

But only once I wondered. It does not matter, after all. And I, personally, in spite of it all, am still unrepentant of my Choice. Both of them. Funny that I chose to live twice.

Poor Mother.

* * *

><p>—Ai, I am not making as much sense as I used, rambling on like this. The last time my mind began to wander was during those last few months when I worked on the damned tunics—yes, damned; doomed, a nicer word, but they were really damned. After all, such an undertaking, such a tangling of soul and project, had already once come to failure long before I was even a remote possibility, before even Lúthien's Choice. (It seems rather pretentious to compare my petty project with such things as the Silmarils, but my project itself was pretentious; I thought to outsmart Death itself, forgetting that only our Creator and his Song has the power of ensuring immortality.)<p>

I had fallen into the same trap as my brothers had, only worse in many ways, for they at least had each other to look out and (if need be) restrain. I had no one; no one saw me slipping away, not until it was almost too late. I had allowed no one close enough to save me sooner.

* * *

><p>Once I had recovered—or at least returned to myself—Father sent me away. It hurt him sore, sending away his only daughter and closest family—I who had been something almost like a friend to him, not just a child—but it forced him to wake up and realize that he was not the only one of us to be slipping. He and I had become friends because grief made us equals, but grief's equality also made him forget some of the harsher parental duties.<p>

Grandmother arrived on a sunny day in early summer to take me herself over the mountain passes to her own lands; it was a mark of Father's worry that he allowed me to travel on the same paths that had stolen Mother. He feared that he had failed me, and it was in vain that I tried to convince him otherwise. Grandmother would not say a word either way.

I did not fight the decision. Recovering took all my strength, so there was none left over for me to use to fight to stay in a place where, moreover, I was increasingly unsure I even wanted to stay. Grandmother always had a commanding way about her—that of one used to giving orders, and of being obeyed—and it was easy to be docile and at long last simply rest and let others figure things out.

This very docility was what led Father to give me up in the end. I overheard them one evening; I was reading in my bed, a nurse sitting by watchfully on the other side of the room, and their voices drifted in through the window, faint on a fainter breeze.

"I cannot understand it," he was saying. "Always before she sat, and watched, and formed an opinion, but now—" He broke off as confusion and sorrow threatened to overwhelm him.

"Can you not?" Grandmother said, a touch of asperity in her voice, even as her mood tended toward kindness. "She needs rest, true Elven rest."

How Father started at that! For a moment I thought he was going to vocally and stridently object. But then something in his spirit changed—some hint of agreement, as though he, too, wished to find such rest in Imladris and could not—and he stood quietly, his spirit in turmoil. Just feeling it made my head hurt.

And then, at last, he said, "Then, if she agrees, she will accompany you to Lothlórien and stay there as long—" He paused, took a breath, his mind still fighting— "For as long as she desires."


	10. Chapter the Tenth

X

LOTHLÓRIEN WAS… _different_. Rivendell had been sedate, but Lothlórien was still.

(I had never before appreciated how much of a crossroads my father's seat was, a meeting place and neutral grounds for exchange between peoples and cultures.)

It took me a long time to emerge from the daze of my fall. When I did and at long last was able to look clearly at the world around me, I found it changed, and not necessarily for the better. Or rather, that it had _not_ changed.

Lothlórien was a dream, an idyll: a place frozen in time. Time flowed past, but it never touched Grandmother's lands, and while this was a wonderful thing, it was also terrible, like a lone note ringing faintly in the back of one's mind that, in lingering, now soured. The Elves who dwelt here kept many of the old ways, the good ones and the bad. Everything was perfect. None of it matched with the world outside. Sometimes it felt as though the land was not truly real and instead but a memory.

* * *

><p>But all of this came later. When I first arrived, Lothlórien's stasis was exactly what I needed, just as Grandmother had said. The quietude and the stillness healed me.<p>

I rested, a deep, tranquil rest that seemed to seep into my very bones. Time did not matter here, so it did not matter how long it took me to heal. Time did not matter here, so there was no reason to count it, to quantify it and hoard up the days and hours as though they were precious things. Since Time did not matter, I could take as much of it as I wanted, and so I did.

As I returned to myself, my mind began to reassert itself and soon wanted an occupation. I began to seek out my old practices once again. I was reluctant to resume old activities and scared to try something new; after all, neither had gone very well for me in the past. But cloth still called to me, and I could not ignore it forever.

It was my grandfather, Celeborn, who gave me the push in the right direction. (He was always much better at meddling and manipulation than Grandmother, for all that he usually despised it.) Grandmother had decided to let me alone to my own devices, which worked up to a point. But after that, I vacillated between longing and fear, not trusting myself with the pursuits that I still loved.

Grandfather began taking me on his rounds through the settlement round their court. It took me a ridiculously long amount of visits to notice how he always seemed to find extra things to discuss with those present in the weaving rooms, and even longer to realize that he knew exactly when I stepped away from him to observe the weavers and their looms more closely. And by then, I knew my way there as well as he.

Mother had not lied: the weavers were spellbinding. The cloth itself seemed to speak with the old ways and old voices. I began to haunt the looms of my own accord. The weavers there not only allowed me to watch, but gave me tips or spelled out their projects and encouraged me to work with those beautiful materials with them. Gone were wool and cotton and even silk; the Elven weaves were softer and more resilient all at once. I asked, once, whether anyone worked with such materials. None did. Such cloths were, obviously, of lesser quality and beauty. I was tutored in the old ways of cloth-work, and proud was the day when the senior weaver picked up my work and grudgingly acclaimed it as worthy of any of those senior weavers present.

It was still a long time after that—I cannot say exactly—before I picked up a needle and cloth again. I thought about it once or twice, but in the early years I was still focused on weaving, and the loom-work seemed to provide whatever had I needed from sewing. But I could only resist for so long, and when I finally gave in to the need, it felt to me like the homecoming that never was. And, after all, it was not sewing that had betrayed me: I had done that all by myself.

* * *

><p>But even in the weaving talans, it was lonely.<p>

I can admit this now, now when I longer try to apologize. I was lonely in Lothlórien. The other Elves—the true Elves—did not purposely shun me. But I was not fully Elven, and I loved the human world far more than I realized even then. It just seemed so natural to me, remembering Maedeth or Borineth at the loom, to compare Elven techniques to Dúnedain, or ask questions about materials or even plants that were lowly and utilized by Men running low on resources, not ever-able Elf-kind. Lothlórien was insular, and I, used to looking outward, did not quite fit in. That bit of humanity running through my veins, however thin, was enough.

* * *

><p>Half a century passed. …<p>

* * *

><p>I was healed but not whole, and I was rested but not content; and I wanted to go home. So Grandmother sent me, with a contingent of her finest warriors, to travel west across the mountains.<p>

But home was not there.

Father was different—harder, less trusting in the future. It hurt to see him this way. My brush with mortality had forced me to embrace life in part because of its very fragility, but it was this fragility that made him turn all the more towards immortality and the Past. He had been this way, really, since Mother's Passage, but now it was clear for me to see—that before he had been tireless. Now he was relentless.

My brothers, on the other hand, had finally mellowed. Their blazing need for vengeance had settled into a quieter sort of burn, a low flame that, nevertheless, could and would still flare up with enough provocation. They were different (although not necessarily better). They were kinder, darker, more understanding. Aye, we understood each other, at long last.

But they were not around very often. It was more likely for them to be visiting the Dúnedain and riding out on missions than to find them anywhere in Rivendell. Once, when they had been out for some weeks, I found my steps turning toward the nursery wing where I last remembered the Dúnadan heir being housed.

There was another dark-haired boy now living there; when I passed by an open door, I saw him holding a book and sitting by a dark-haired woman—and I thought she was Borineth. For a full delusional moment, I thought she was Borineth, and I drew in a sharp breath audibly.

At the noise, she looked up briefly before turning back to the lad, and I saw all the differences: straighter hair, darker eyes, a tilt to her head that Borineth had never worn.

However much I hated myself for it, I could not face them. Barely a generation had passed; there was not enough space between past and present.

* * *

><p>I had no home. Lothlórien was introverted and sometimes a little too still, but at least there I was comfortable. I could pursue whatever projects I chose, comfortable in myself at long last and settled in the knowledge that, unlike Father, Grandmother would not overprotectively plan my choices and activities. (Father tried, when I went home. He wanted more than ever to protect me from all the ills of the world—especially mortality…) But in Lothlórien, there was no such threat (how could there be when even the Seasons barely came?), and so I could do as I wished.<p>

And so, when I returned, I did just that. It was intensely liberating—and rather frightening, to truly be an adult on my own terms and no one else's. But it was what I needed.

* * *

><p>My brothers and I began a correspondence—haltingly, at first, for there was still much awkwardness between us, but it soon blossomed and grew. They told me of their doings, truly told me. I learned, for the first time, the true extent of the Dúnedain's dwindling.<p>

When my brothers managed to rescue most of the villagers from a fearsome goblin raid, I learned of it. My brothers were doing work of real worth. And with that I remembered that I could do something of worth, too. I could sew; however much I had corrupted that fact before, a fact it remained, and so I put—not my soul—my _heart_ into the work. I made clothes, blankets, cloths for bandages. And I sent a giant package back to my brothers, who knows how many months later, in the hopes that, however late a gift, it might still prove of value. And they wrote back more honestly than before, and more respectfully, each of us truly valuing the other's work for the first time. (We had changed, but not necessarily for the worse.)

* * *

><p>Even with such inducement, it took me some years to gather enough courage to attempt anything like my old projects. That only came after news of a particularly devastating raid on one of the largest Dúnedain settlements. I knew that my news was some months late, that these men (and women and children) were now dead some months, but it burned in my heart with all the freshness of yesterday. Blankets were not enough. Not when I could do more.<p>

And so, nearly a full century after my great folly, I turned my efforts once again toward the binding of Power and cloth.

* * *

><p>Tinúviel sang, but Undómiel wove.<p> 


	11. Chapter the Eleventh

XI

THE WORLD TURNED, and Time rolled on.

The world turned, and Father asked me, again, to come back to Imladris. To "come home."

The world turned, and I agreed to visit.

* * *

><p>I actually visited multiple times, once every forty years or so, staying for about a decade before retreating again to the stillness and solitude of Lothlórien. I rarely lingered. I loved Rivendell—its woods will always speak of shelter and safety to me—but it was not my home; and more importantly, however much Father tried and wished, I no longer exactly <em>fit<em>. The trauma of Mother's passage had not just affected our family alone. I think her sorrow and our subsequent difficulties existed as a defining event in Imladris's timeline around which everything swung: there were distinct before and after ways of life, and I was not a part of the _after_. Whenever at Imladris, I visited with childhood friends and we made merry for a time, but there was a limit to our shared understandings. And when we made our farewells, there was always an element of relief along with the sadness.

And I made new friends to replace the old, albeit slowly, and though they numbered fewer and not as close, there was still genuine affection to be had in Lothlórien; and if the affection was tempered with a languidness of curiosity and even concern as to my deepest fears and desires, well, that was how I liked it. I had never been that honest with someone even before 2509, and now I was more inclined to like the others for their disinterest rather than resent it.

Locked in time as it was, Lothlórien had an odd quality about it, as though it existed in a single moment only, but an eternal moment. I did not much have to look to the future because the future would never be much different than yesterday. I could exist in the present with comfort, and so I did. I was aware of time's passage mostly in relation to the doings in the outside world that I learned of from my father and brothers' letters.

Father and I corresponded regularly, though rather haltingly at first, and slowly but surely we built a relationship much more lasting than those of before and after Mother's passing. It was not like the strange equality that had been forced upon us directly after Mother left, when we were trying so desperately to pick up the pieces of our lives and then carry on as though we were still whole. This was something different: more complex and more fulfilling. He would often ask me advice (on a wide range of affairs) and it was not a training exercise like when I was young nor him using me as a sounding board for his own ideas like after, but rather it was the manner of one asking a younger friend he respected and cherished for her counsel and a fresh perspective.

At first I did not know what to make of it. Somehow it had been easier to accept our earlier friendship because Mother had left and everything then was strange and wrong, so I barely was affected by the strangeness of being treated as a peer by my father, no less. Now the trauma of conversing amiably with my own parent, and the difficulty in categorizing our relationship, hit me full force, and Grandmother's soft laughter at my shock was less than helpful. But gradually, as I adjusted, I found that this was far better. He did not treat me as an equal like before, yet this was as it should be, for I was not his equal in either wisdom or experience. No, we were not equals, but we were friends; and if we wanted to rely on each other for advice once in a while, who was I to say no?

So I was friend to my father, and ally (and sometimes accomplice) to my brothers; I was apparently something of a blessing to the Dúnedain due to the many blankets and cloaks and whatever else could be sewn that I produced slowly but surely and then sent to those distant kinsmen. In Lothlórien I technically held the ranking of a princess, being the granddaughter of the Lady and her Lord, but to my friends and acquaintances I was but a talented seamstress and weaver as well as a good companion.

And as the years passed, I settled and found true contentment in my life. I was not a heroine; I was not some Lúthien stepping out of the songs of old to bring peace to the land; my closest connection to those fighting the forces of darkness was at the most making a few of the heroes' cloaks and no more. I was Arwen. I knew who Undómiel was, and I was certain she was not and never would be Tinúviel.

* * *

><p>In 2951 I made another visit to Imladris. It had been rather longer than usual since I had last seen Father; the mountains were growing ever less safe, and the evils of the world were reawakening… At least thus I know retrospectively.<p>

But it could be sensed even when living as isolated as I did. There were little things, small signs that threatened the easy balance of my life: the growing tension of watchmen and border guards who had tended their posts implacably for centuries if not millennia; Grandmother's Councils lasting longer and longer; she herself coming from her Mirror with strain in her eyes and her hands. Added to my knowledge of outside happenings garnered from my family's missives, it was enough to make me wonder and worry.

The last two decades in particular had been most curious for another reason. There was a note of caution and a lack of detail in Father's letters particularly that caught my eye, and my brothers had been straight-out secretive. For in 2933, we had received news of a most terrible kind: Arathorn Chieftain of the Dúnedain was slain with no heir, and it was feared that Elendil's line would finally fade for good.

But there _had_ been an heir, I knew. How he died, or whither he had disappeared, it was not known; and of course it was a fact completely unrelated that my brothers sometimes wrote most circumspectly of an orphaned human child called Estel who had been entrusted to the care of the Last Homely House. It was also completely unrelated that around the same time Father became rather more careful with his visitors… Indicators such as these were well-hidden, easily attributed to other factors, and only noticed with long and close familiarity like what I had; it took me some time, but I eventually placed it together. It took me even longer to figure out whether I wished to let my family know what I knew, and by then Father unwittingly made such deliberation unnecessary by officially inviting me to stay.

Thus in 2951 I rather looked forward to meeting this Man-child on whose unwitting shoulders rested the hopes of so many.

* * *

><p>As always happened after long years at Grandmothers', the vibrancy of Imladris's seasons was nearly overwhelming. It was early spring: the trees were budding, the grass showed a pale green with small patches of unmelted snow here and there, and everywhere the first flowers of spring blossomed. True, the other lands north of Lothlórien showed signs of the season as well, but nowhere could compete with the pure vibrancy and verdant growths of Rivendell. (So it seemed to me then, when I was younger—not much younger than I am now, if one measures in years; but I was young in terms of living though not existing.)<p>

The boy was not there when I arrived. I did not know this directly upon arrival, of course; it took some weeks, in our unhurried Elven way, for Father to confirm my original suspicions. Estel, so the boy was called, was on an expedition to the Wilds with my brothers, and none were expected back for some time.

But soon enough I met the mother of young Hope herself.

Ah, Gilraen: my mother-in-law, now. I doubt she ever truly saw me as her daughter. I made it rather difficult for her, it is true. Perhaps if they had been born some centuries earlier, when I had not recovered from the loss of my own mother and still could have needed another—no. I will not indulge in such ramblings. That leads to dangerous thoughts too close to regrets, and I would not want Estel, if he sees me now, if he is watching or listening as some Men believe, to misunderstand. I have my regrets, of course, but no more than other mortals, really far fewer than most. And where my husband is concerned, I have none.

Where was I? Yes. My future (at the time) mother-in-law.

* * *

><p>I had the (mis)fortune of becoming acquainted with Gilraen long before she became my prospective mother-in-law. As it happened, we were first formally made known to each other within days of my arrival in Imladris. (We had been introduced, once, in easy company, but she had slipped away almost before my companion had finished talking.) It was at a dinner banquet, which, given the circumstances, made for unfortunate first impressions.<p>

Father was entertaining a rare combination of visitors, a group from the Havens and a contingent from Thranduil's Court. Thus it was a true banquet as befit any king's hall, and as the daughter of the host, I was dressed like the princess that I was. I was always attractive, but this—it set back even some of my admirers by making me seem something powerful, beautiful in a way I had not been before, in which beauty could be wielded, not just admired. I was unused to admirers after my long seclusion in Lothlórien, and the combined effect made me slightly giddy.

And it was in this state that Gilraen saw me when we first properly met.

It was near the end of the feast. Father introduced us—"Gilraen," warmly, "I do not know if you have yet met my daughter, Arwen, but lately returned from her grandmother's…"

I ignored Father's twisting of the truth and curtsied, deeply, not just to her but in honor of the blood of her ancestors that ran so thick in her veins. I could see echoes of past acquaintances in her face, in her hair, in the very way she held herself that I fancied was like that of a past friend. "A pleasure to meet you, Madam. I have not met a Dúnadan in quite some time, but all the women with whom I have been acquainted were some of the best people I have ever known, and great friends to me." Unspoken but heavily implied was my fervent hope that we, too, could be friends, or at the very least friendly acquaintances.

She flushed with surprised pleasure and curtsied back. "Just Gilraen, my lady. I do not think I am quite worthy of such a title as Madam. I am but a lone woman and mortal."

"I, too, am but a woman," I returned brightly, "and as such, we women ought to stick together. 'Madam' is merely a token of that respect."

She offered a tremulous smile that radiated equal shares of amusement and trepidation. "I must take this opportunity to thank you, Lady Arwen. I owe you much, although you probably do not realize it."

It took me a moment to realize what she might be referencing. "The blanket and clothes packages, do you mean?" She nodded. "You are welcome. It is the least I can do. And after all, we are kin, however remote."

Gilraen smiled a bit more tightly than before. "I grew up under one of your quilts, my lady. It might not have seemed much to you, but it made a world of difference to my family." My stomach lurched at the conflicted wave of grateful resentment that poured off her. Clearly it had cost her greatly to admit such a thing.

"Then it did what I hoped," I admitted candidly. "I only wish I could do more."

"Your works do much good already, far more than anything I have done," she returned fiercely, her tone slightly scolding, as though I ought to take more pride in my gifts. "I know not what sort of power you put into the cloth, but somehow something of your weave holds more warmth and lasts longer than anything of mortal make, even that of the most skilled of our weavers."

Her tone and words were full of praise and gratitude. I wished that this conversation had happened at the start of the banquet rather than towards the end; the strength of her unvoiced resentment towards me was beginning to affect the balance of my stomach.

"I have some small Power, and I have done my best on multiple occasions to instill a small portion of it into each my works to increase their utility." Even after all this time, the memory of those tunics still immediately flashed into my mind, but it was not particularly troublesome. I had long since learnt to accept it and move on per Borineth's advice.

Her descendant's eyes flashed but remained inscrutable. "It is indeed most generous of such a high lady as yourself to give up a _small_ part of your energies on such _remote_ kin as ourselves."

It was momentarily disconcerting to have my innocent words thrown back in my face thus, but it would have taken far harsher phrases to make me start. After all, I had not yet forgotten some of Father's more memorable Councils. And the distant thought of Maedeth gave me more than enough warmth to smile at Gilraen just as fondly as before. "I consider it an honor and a duty to serve your people, Madam Gilraen, in whatever capacity I can, due to our kinship and more personally to everything I gained from your ancestresses. Their kindnesses are a debt I can never repay."

I focused on my wineglass to settle my stomach and forestall any more maudlin remembrances. There was no need to glance at Gilraen's face; her feelings continued to radiate forth strongly.

Finally she said in a far more constrained tone, "Indeed we must all do our duty, however painful or thankless. Nevertheless I thank you, Lady Arwen, and drink to you in the name of our ancestor Tar-Minyatur and shared past."

And as she raised her wine in a small toast, the only thought that went through my mind was, _Elros? What has he to do with anything?_


	12. Chapter the Twelfth

XII

IT HAD BEEN LONG indeed since I last perused the old texts discussing my father's brother. Yet spring was just turning into summer when I at last gave in to growing curiosity and once more turned to the subject that had so engrossed me when I was young and had not yet met mortal men, when loss was but a word rather than an integral part of my person.

Prior to Gilraen's odd comment at the feast some weeks ago, I thought I was over such fascinations. After all, it had been over a millennium since I last experienced that dual obsession with and revulsion towards Mortality and those who seemed (to me at least) to actively seek it. So much had happened in the interim that I thought of the child I had been as someone entirely different and separate from me in personality and activity alike. (But different and separate are not the same, after all…) But now Gilraen's remembrance had stirred up recollections of my own, and with them arose old doubts and concerns that could not be squelched. I suppose they never had been, really; instead the process of growing up had simply drowned them out for a while.

But now I had little else to take precedence—most of my projects were back in Lothlórien, I had already learnt all the news from prior acquaintances, and Father's doings with his guests consisted of private sessions rather than Councils I could attend. Instead what I had supposed to be a passing curiosity soon resurrected the old obsession in full.

It was not really so much her comment itself that bothered me as everything else that it brought back. In retrospect it made sense that she would mention him as our shared ancestor, our one tactile commonality. What did not make sense, when I went over the scene in my mind, was my reaction: Gilraen's comments had utterly unbalanced me. And now here I was, chasing after old ghosts whom I had supposed to be put away long ago. It was very strange to me, just as it was strange to relive past activities and anxieties (for with questions about Elros came even older fears concerning the same central question, fears of Lúthien…). Even entering Father's library was strange; it had been so long since I had stood in this section, since I had passed that particular spiraling pillar…

In a moment of weakness I stopped and inspected the pillar's base, wondering if it would still show the remnants of that one disastrous, magnificent afternoon spent with 'Dan and 'Ro which had started as a game of hide-and-go-seek but had somehow degenerated into a reenactment of the great sea-battles of Númenor, complete with wooden swords being swung from atop the ladders that slid all around the stacks. –But the pillar gleamed, shiny and smooth and entirely unscratched, and only then did it occur to me that things would of course have restored themselves through ambient Power within months of even the slightest damage; that in fact the very next time I had entered the library but a few weeks afterward, the scratches had already disappeared.

Yet as I made my way between the towering stacks, I felt strangely connected to that child, as though I were multiple mes all at once: the settled adult Undómiel; that young elleth fearing she was Tinúviel, so certain she was not truly niece to Elros, and in the resulting confusion not really knowing who she was; and underneath it all baby Arwen, whose curiosity had not yet been burnt out or scared into hiding by the harsh lessons learnt from curiosity's forays into life and living. Curiosity, yes: resurfaced, resurgent, it pulled me inexorably back to my oldest of haunts, those shelves which discussed Elros and the founding of Númenor. I let my fingers trace over titles and spines until they reached the book I had read most and hated most.

It was a history, like all the others; in fact, it was slimmer and smaller than many, and tucked between two giant tomes as it was, few would find it unless specifically looking for it (and, to my knowledge, few did). But I… well, I returned to it, seeking it out again and again, for the same reason I hated it; it drew me in even as it disturbed my equanimity. You see, it contained several passages from Elros himself, copied down from the High King's own words and writings.

Feeling suddenly very young (and also rather weak in the knees), I pulled out the book and sank down rather ungracefully to sit right on the floor, never mind that the gems on my brow and the fine weave of my dress were suited far more for a ball than sitting in some dark library corner. I leafed past the few pages chronicling his early life and paused instinctively on the short passage concerning his Choice. Reading through it again, I frowned. It was so very brief. Granted, the book focused on his reign and other mortal doings, but then why not discuss the Choice that had made all those doings possible? And even more puzzlingly, out of the whole book, this section alone lacked anything even approaching Elros's own words or thoughts. All my old frustrations rose once again to the surface. Why not a word, even a hint? Why ignore this most important of moments? the moment that changed everything?

(unless the Choice was made before the words themselves were ever dreamt of…)

Perhaps that was what had always bothered me, I reasoned, sitting there on the library floor, surrounded by soaring stacks and the faint musky scent of old paper. I always wanted to know the _why_ of people. Lúthien I knew I ought to forgive even if her legacy still bothered me at night (and other times as well), for at least she had reasons, however foolish and one-sided they may have been. But for Elros there seemed to be none, as if he were deliberately keeping silent on the subject. And that in itself raised more questions, more _why_s, to which I could find no answer.

That was the very reason I had stopped looking in the first place, I now remembered, partly because it seemed foolish to continue on such an impossible quest, but also because at that point, especially after I met my first Mortal Men, I was no longer sure I even wished to know.

* * *

><p>It was too much. I had to get out. I had to get out of that library: away from those books mocking me with their silences and all the words they failed to record, away from my childhood and my curiosity that only ever led me astray. I wanted to be done with it all. Elros and Lúthien were both dead, so why couldn't they rest for me?<p>

* * *

><p>I wandered the corridors and passageways of Imladris all that afternoon, too uneasy to remain in any one place for too long. My old haunts were all occupied, and I was in no shape to undergo others' emotions as well as my own. Instead I set out in whichever direction took me opposite from where others were. Whenever I came to a crossing of corridors, I used my Power to sense the direction from which came any emotions and then took the opposite path.<p>

After some time of periodically stopping in the middle of hallways with my eyes closed, the better to concentrate on my Power, and then starting again, I at last found myself absolutely alone in a long, cool hall, lit only by what beams of sunlight came through slits in the roof.

I recognized it immediately and frowned, trying not to think about what ill will had brought me here of all places, here to the resting-place of the shards of Narsil, a grave memory of the fallen greatness of Men.

The hall was well-tended, though rarely visited. Age-old tapestries hung along its walls. Those closest to the sword's stand depicted the events of that fateful battle so long ago at the end of the Second Age. But farther up the hall—where I had entered—the story on the walls was older still. There on my right, some distance away, Elendil stood, perched confidently on the prow of his boat, looking forward to the advancing shores of Arda. To my left Eärendil the Mariner dealt a killing blow to the great drake Ancalagon. And directly in front of me, larger than life, inescapable, her eyes boring into mine, stood Tinúviel.

I stared back, undaunted, taking deep slow breaths to control myself. It felt as though we two were having some long-due silent confrontation. I held my head high. Looking at her, at this tapestry, was like finding my reflection in a pond. There were differences, to be sure, but the superficial resemblance, at least, was strong. And I was afraid, and knew my fear at long last: for, truly, I was not Tinúviel nor never would be; but to throw my life away for some emotion? to willingly accept death, if need be?

I hated being lonely—but I was not, even when alone. I had friends, I had a family. I had the tall mallorn-trees of Lothlórien with all their serenity, and I had the sun-dappled birches of Rivendell constantly ushering in the seasons. I had my needle, and my Power, and I had blankets to make, a contribution, however small. I had _life_. I loved life. I had been given the choice, and I had chosen to live. And if love was so grand that it made one turn away from living, all for the sake of one lone person, than I wanted none of it.

Lúthien stood there, relentless.—

No. A tapestry of days gone by hung on a wall in a room dedicated to a broken sword. And outside, swaying birches and an early-summer sun beckoned.

I left.

* * *

><p>AN: To be honest, I wasn't expecting that. But I feel like epiphanies do tend to come when least expected.

The hall where the shards of Narsil are kept is sort of based on the movie; I wrote this with only a vague memory of what it looked like, but after watching the two very short scenes that take place in there, it seems my memory wasn't too far off. The description here doesn't _entirely_ square with the movie-impression, but it's within the realm of possibility, and since I'm not even basing this off the movies anyway, I guess I could just chalk it up to 'creative differences.' The books say nothing about a hall for this purpose, which makes sense seeing as when the action takes place Aragorn's already been carrying the sword around with him for a while. But it is not inconceivable that, before this point, and definitely before Aragorn has learned his birthright, Elrond would have had a special place set aside to house the sword.


	13. Chapter the Thirteenth

XIII

IT WAS COOL under the birches, especially once the sun began to slip towards the horizon. Sunset always did come early here in the valley. I was glad I remembered to fetch a mantle from my room instead of rushing out headlong as I had first intended.

A stray breeze blew through my hair and twitched at my sleeves. On its heels, in the quiet that followed, a noise like singing came.

I slowed my pace to listen better. The singer had a rather gravelly uneven tone, far too rough to perform in public. But there was energy and vigor in that voice, too, a lust for life that made me smile and want to hear more regardless of any gravel. He was singing—

Then I did stop. He was singing the Lay of Lúthien, of all things! I had heard it often enough before, but I had barely recognized it, so energetically and cheerfully did he sing. Elves held it as a melancholy song, bittersweet at best. But this… this was _happy_.

The voice grew louder. I moved away from it across the greensward towards the next clump of birches. Another breeze plucked at my hair before it caught at my mantle, and I turned half-way around to tuck it back around. The singing broke off abruptly.

"Tinúviel!"

I froze. Surely he did not—

"_Tinúviel_!"

There was no one else present.

He thought me Tinúviel.

I straightened, and turned, and smiled, the thinnest and sharpest smile I could make while still being polite.

He was dark-haired and tall and very, very young. A young Man.

"Who are you?" I asked, the words spilling out more sharply than politeness dictated. "And why do you call me by that name?"

"Because I believed you to be indeed Lúthien Tinúviel, of whom I was singing." He paused, blushing slightly, before adding, "But if you are not she, then you walk in her likeness."

He was completely guileless. It shocked me into silence, cutting off my original biting response. In the face of his honesty my anger drained away. He thought he had walked straight into the past or some such thing, and instead of ogling me, he now simply felt embarrassed at a real person catching him in his fantasy.

Reluctantly my estimation of him rose: there was neither shame nor lust in his gaze, just frank wonder and admiration. Something in me softened.

But the words still stung, and without anger there was nothing to hold back my grief and fear. "So many have said," I rejoined coolly, trying in vain to stay unemotional. "Yet her name is _not_ mine." It was all true; in the past many suitors had thought it the highest of compliments that they could pay me. (Needless to say their efforts had backfired.) But such a biting response was not really appropriate for this situation, either, not when he had not really done anything wrong at all.

The Man winced as I finished speaking, not physically but emotionally, as though he somehow had sensed exactly what that phrase meant to me. For a long moment he felt exactly the same emotions as I did. The understanding, the synchronization, was so complete that I almost believed that he too could sense others' emotions.

I felt vulnerable. The Man remained still, his gray eyes fixed on mine. Gray—he was a Dúnadan, then. But unlike his ancestors, those Dúnedain I had met all those years ago, he looked _at_ me, not through. It made me feel safe: he understood.

He started to turn away as if to leave. He was disappointed; he felt rejected and scorned at, all because of an ill-chosen song.

But I had not meant to hurt him...

"Though... maybe my doom will not be unlike hers."

The grove was unnaturally silent. Instead there was a strange look in his eyes: something akin to pity, but gentler; something like acceptance. And I finally wondered: _Who is this Man, to see so clearly at such a young age?_

The thought led me, thankfully, to a much safer topic: "But who are you?"

He blinked, and the gentle look was gone. "Estel I was called." His emotions beat down on me with all the strength of a miniature sun: belonging, pride, hope, fear, loss, confusion. "But I am Aragorn, Arathorn's son, Isildur's Heir, Lord of the Dúnedain." He started slowly but picked up speed and confidence with each successive title, until by the last 'Lord' he radiated confidence and pride. But underneath there was still an undercurrent of uncertainty, of questioning.

So this was Estel, the hope of his people. It was strange: from all reports, I had expected a boy. But here stood a man. Now that I looked properly I could see the resemblance; the memory of his past kin ran strong. In fact he looked not unlike his namesake Aragorn I.

I felt rather silly for not having recognized him. A bubble of laughter rose out of me, at his stubborn pride, at my own foolishness, at the strange coincidences that had been the whole day—for what but coincidence could have had him singing such a song, in this place, at this exact time, to catch my attention so? "Then we are kin from afar," I told him brightly. "For I am Arwen Elrond's daughter, and am named also Undómiel." It did indeed seem fitting that he should meet Evenstar at twilight.

He smiled and glanced at the sky, recognizing my quip. "Often it is seen that in dangerous days men hide their chief treasure," he rejoined. I waited rather warily, hoping he was not going to try to impress me with a witty response. "Yet I marvel at Elrond and your brothers; for though I have dwelt in this house from childhood, I have heard no word of _you_." Alas, he was trying to impress me. "Surely your father has not kept you locked in his hoard?"

It came out rather accusatorily. I brushed it off with an airy "No" and then could not help but glance towards the mountains in the darkening east, remembering the passage, and remembering that other fateful passage in 2509 that had changed so much. "I have dwelt for a time in the land of my mother's kin, in far Lothlórien. I have but lately returned to visit my father again. It is many years since I walked in Imladris."

He was confused. I could sense it, but it was also written plainly on his face. He looked just the same as Borineth had that day I had told her my age; he wore that same mixture of wonder and confusion. I frowned a little. Should not he understand it, after spending all that time with my brothers and growing up in this place?

I looked in those gray eyes—those understanding eyes of a boy just come into manhood, of a young man who did not yet know all that those eyes comprehended—and once again felt any harsher feelings melting away. Instead I told him warmly, with a hint of teasing (not unlike my brothers), "Do not wonder! For the children of Elrond have the life of the Eldar."

He blinked and then flushed, with an accompanying wave of embarrassment strong enough to turn my own cheeks red. But there was something more I felt, a curiosity and concern, concern for me, strangely enough. And something else stirred, something deeper.

I concentrated for a moment—and then pulled away sharply, barely stopping myself from gasping aloud. I barely heard him mumble an awkward goodbye. I was too busy trying to deny the truth of what I had just felt.

* * *

><p>I can say it now, now that the years have passed. He asked me once, years later, why I did not say anything about it, why I ignored it. There are many reasons, my dearest one, but most of all: I was not ready for it, true, but neither were you.<p>

Something like love had stirred in his heart, truest love. I had experienced the whole gamut of emotions—so I thought, with all those suitors and their honeyed words—but never this. My Power did not allow me to feel wrongly, and I had felt love.

It was new and strange and it had burned not fierce and strong but steadily; and it was that last fact which scared me most of all.


	14. Chapter the Fourteenth

XIV

IN THE DAYS THAT FOLLOWED I think we both were avoiding each other, driven apart by that terrible emotion which had arisen in his heart. One touch of that flame and both our souls had flinched away.

Father did not hold a welcoming feast in honor of Estel and my brothers' return; to do so would acknowledge something of Estel's true lineage and importance, and any public announcement of the sort would have completely undone all those years of secrecy. (After all, most of the Imladris's residents still had no idea that a human boy had been living amongst them for the last twenty years.) Instead, at the end of the week Father held a small "family" gathering, consisting of himself, Estel, my brothers, and Gilraen, along with myself.

Sitting at the small table with a brother on either side, I had never felt so separate and alone. I was not a part of this family, this nuclear unit that talked and joked and referenced milestones in their lives of which I had but the faintest knowledge, if any. Elrond was more Estel's father than mine—or so I thought for one bitter, self-pitying moment, when, in the midst of my brothers' telling of Estel's triumphs, I looked up and not just felt but _saw_ my father's emotions written plainly across his features. Pride and joy were only a small part of the deep love that shone from his eyes, from his ever-present smile which he made no attempt to suppress, from the very way his fingers tightened on his glass when, in 'Dan's narrative, Estel found himself simultaneously imperiled and in command of their entire company. In that moment I knew it in my soul that Father did not love Estel like a son but _as _his son. Estel was his third son, his fourth child, one with whom he'd spent nearly two decades. So short a time—but twice as long as my previous visit had lasted, and nearly three times as long since that last visit had occurred.

After that I paid more attention to the table than those sitting round it. The only time I looked up was when I felt someone watching me.

I thought it to be Father, for oft in the past he had noticed my unease sooner than either of the twins; but right now he was wholly occupied in his conversation with 'Dan. I let my gaze flit around the table. It was not 'Ro, nor Gilraen, who was directly across from me. But that left—

I looked back down at my plate rather than acknowledge him; barely a week had passed since our encounter, and I was still deeply unsettled. Yet the gaze persisted. I put my fork down carefully and met eyes with Estel squarely, a challenge and reminder of the rudeness of his behavior.

_I'm sorry. Forgive me._

The emotions I felt practically shaped themselves into words. I had never felt anything like it. I stared. He flushed.

I could not continue contact. In nearly three millennia I thought I had long since comprehended all the vagaries of my Power. But, if so, then what in Eru's name was this?

I broke the connection and stared at my food blindly, concentrating with all my might on my brothers, on Father, even Gilraen, anything but that …_thing_ sitting just down the table. As soon as departure was polite, I fled.

* * *

><p>I do not use the word lightly: I ran down that hallway, down all the hallways and then half-through the gardens before I finally slowed my pace even a little. I found the last bench before garden gave way to wood, and there I stayed as the shadows lengthened and melted together, until the sun had gone completely and the Evenstar was but one of millions in the vaulted sky above.<p>

I relaxed a little and leaned against the sturdy back of the bench.

A shadow detached itself from the general darkness of the path.

"My lady Arwen."

I pulled the mantle tighter around me but made no effort to leave. One could not run from her fears forever, I reasoned; and curiosity now rose within me, the urge to once again attempt to unravel the unknown.

"I came to apologize."

"For what?" The words slipped out before I could stop them. But neither did I wish to take them back.

Estel's brow furrowed slightly in confusion, but he continued to look me straight in the eye. "For my foolish behavior yesterday. I had no right to pry. And for tonight: I upset you."  
>"Not on purpose," I murmured.<p>

His frown deepened. "I was prying again. And in doing so, I frightened you. Believe me, I did not wish it! I would do anything rather than hurt you." His gray eyes were pleading. I could not help thinking in passing that he would win the heart of any maid he chose once he went out into the world. He already had an empathetic touch; once it was honed, he would be able to win the hearts of Men anywhere he went.

"Your apology is more than accepted: it was never necessary in the first place; to my knowledge there was naught for which to gain forgiveness," I told him honestly.

He gave a short bow in thanks, but there was still tension in his shoulders, in his stance. He wanted to confess something.

Confidence came easier when the body was at ease. "Please sit, Estel. –Do you mind if I call you Estel?"

He sat down jerkily. "Why wouldn't—Oh, you mean whether you should say _Aragorn_ instead? I do not mind. I have always been called Estel, at least until a few days ago. It is a good thing you said _Estel_, for I know not if I would have even answered otherwise." His lips twitched into a quick self-deprecating smile.

I smiled back tentatively. "I had not even considered that problem. My question was motivated by pure self-interest, for I have already known another Aragorn, albeit several centuries ago."

Estel was still facing straight ahead, a little afraid of me—or perhaps just afraid of himself around me—but at the mention of his namesake he dared a quick glance in my direction. "Did you know him well?"

"In his childhood, yes. I was good friends with his mother and the helper who accompanied her to Imladris. He was a nice boy—very polite and soft-spoken."

I had not meant it as a rebuke, but he blushed nonetheless. "I _am_ sorry, my lady. I should not have tried to pry like that, especially when I clearly have so little control over it."

We had returned to the original question. "What is 'it'?" I asked carefully.

He shrugged. "Frankly, I have no idea. It is not Power, like that of Elves. I just…" He trailed off.

"You do not have to say if you do not wish it." I pursed my lips slightly, remembering the probing of several less than helpful Healers who had been rather too excited about my brush with Mandos's Halls. "I understand what it is to have things happen which you can barely understand and wish to share even less."

A lightning-bug flashed by, the first of the summer. I knew that my knuckles had turned white from the tightness of my grip on my mantle. I had not meant to ever reference that event, ever. And now: I had not revealed anything, but to even consider doing so was… unexpected.

"Thank you for telling me that."

It was not at all the answer I had expected; I turned to look into his face, what little I could see of it in the dim light from the stars and waxing moon. There was knowledge in his eyes, if not comprehension. He did not understand, fully, what he himself had said; but he understood enough to say it, and mean it.

"You have a keen understanding, Estel, for one so young." I had been frightened at nothing. The incident at dinner—it had not been something so silly like two souls touching, as in the popular romances, but rather the struggles of a boy dealing with the first flashes of empathy. _A rare gift_, I mused, _one that will be sore needed in the struggles ahead._ "And I dare say it will only grow with time."

"But is that even a good thing? It growing, I mean?" His eyes shone pale when the moonlight fell on them. Right now they were wide and frightened, a little boy's eyes.

"Why would it not be? Empathy—true empathy—is as valuable as it is rare."

"Sometimes… sometimes it is barely present, not even a whisper, and other times it comes on so strong I can barely stand it, I feel so much that none of it means _anything_ to me! … And I have no idea why it ever comes or goes! What if someday I completely lose control of it? If even _you_ were driven away, what would it do to Men?"

"No, Estel. You will not lose control. As for me: I am not the best gage of such matters, I am afraid; I know of no other who would be affected as I." I took one of his hands between both of my own; it was deathly cold. I saw also that he was trembling. "Just as you have learned to use your hands to fight or Heal, so will you learn to use this."

"But how can you know that, Arwen?" He was about to go on but then realized what he had just called me. "I mean, my lady."

"Arwen," I corrected. "I think we have shared enough confidences to be friends now, yes?"

He smiled, and it was a gentle thing, falling soft and kind upon me. "As you say—Arwen."

"You must trust yourself more. And," I added archly, "you must not push yourself so much like you did this evening."

Estel blushed again. "I only wanted to apologize. I have wanted to do so all week, but I was …a little afraid. And when I did look I could not find you."

"I did not really want to be found," I confessed. "Moreover, as a mere visitor, I have no set schedule of places to be, so I tend to wander about."

He opened his mouth to say something and then closed it again. I raised a brow inquiringly. "Never mind, please," he said. "It was too much to ask. I think— We have gone far enough tonight, haven't we?"

I was about to protest automatically and then realized that he was exactly right: any more confidences shared on his part and we would both be embarrassed; any more on mine and I would be too uncomfortable (_too scared_, a part of my mind whispered) to ever speak so candidly again. "You are very discerning, Estel," I told him frankly. "It will hold you in good stead."

"Thank you." He smiled, a trifle sadly. "And thank you for talking with me." He started to stand in order to take his leave. Only then did I realize I still held his hand; I let it slip out naturally as he rose and hoped that he would not ascribe to much significance to a sisterly gesture. "How long will you be staying in Imladris?" He was a little embarrassed, but I sensed a spark of hope buoying him onward. "That is to say, do you think maybe we could speak again sometime—as friends do?"

"Of course," I said warmly, standing as well. "My visits usually last some years."  
>He grinned openly. It was a nice sight. "Right. I should have realized that. My lady—<em>Arwen<em>. Good night." He bowed, hand over his heart, and then retreated up the path into the shadows.

* * *

><p>After he had gone, I leaned back on the bench, drinking in the starlight and thinking over the conversation. There had been so many other, surface emotions that I had caught nary a glimpse of that treacherous burning feeling which had so scared me on our first meeting. Perhaps, I told myself, it was completely absent. Maybe we really could be friends.<p>

* * *

><p>When I recalled the meeting again, as I lay in my bed staring at the darkened ceiling, what stayed foremost in my mind even as my thoughts began to drift away was not the question of which emotions I had felt, but rather that understanding look in those gray eyes.<p> 


End file.
